The Green Goblin
by Cimz
Summary: Todd, Blair, Starr, Jack, Sam, and Hope have just gotten into a rhythm when Sam's father returns and the custody battle is on! Has Blair really gotten over Todd's past with Tea? Has Todd really gotten over Blair's past with the imposter? How does Sam handle being caught in the middle? Third part of a return of Todd trilogy after Over the Candlestick & Diamond in the Sky. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**The Green Goblin—Prologue**

"Blair."

He heard his own tired voice calling her name before he was able to open his eyes. "Blair, are you okay?"

She didn't answer, and his skin crawled with fear. She'd answered before, when Margaret had given them the walkie talkies.

_"I'm locked in the trunk of her car in a garage somewhere. Todd, it's cold. It's so, so cold. I don't know if I'm ever gonna get out of here."_

"Close your eyes and listen to my voice. Okay, I'll keep you warm... Your voice kept me alive. You kept me alive, and I'm gonna do the same for you. I'm okay. We're gonna get through this together. We're gonna keep each other alive. Margaret's no match for us. I've been talking to you every day."

"I felt you reach out to me. That's why I stole Kevin's airtime."

"I begged you not to give up on me. I'm so glad you didn't believe that note I left you on our wedding day. I thought you were gonna hate me for sure..."

She'd had him tied to a bed for months on end. Then the car crusher. He could feel the grease and metal against his overgrown beard. There was no sound but his own sobs.

He forced his eyes open. He couldn't look at the crusher in his head any longer.

Had Margaret taken him back to the cabin?

No, this place was too clean and too bright. Someone had tried hard to make it less sterile- there were flowers and balloons and photographs his tired eyes couldn't quite bring into focus.

He couldn't move his arms, but they weren't tied down. He couldn't move his legs, but he didn't feel gunshot wounds or infection. This wasn't the clinic, and Margaret wasn't here.

So where had she dumped him?

He couldn't think of an answer, and he didn't have the strength to do much but wait for someone to give him one.

He did not expect that person to be Tea Delgado.

"Walker!" she shouted as soon as their eyes met. She threw herself almost on top of him, laughing and sobbing. "You're awake! You would wake up when I wasn't here. Dani and I have been here every day, as much of the day as we can. She sits here and does homework. I sit here and write briefs."

"Delgado," he muttered hoarsely. "Where are we?"

"Oh." She wiped her tears away hastily. "Tahiti. We thought it might be easier for you to recover if you were away from everything. Dani needed a change of scene. I guess I did, too."

"Where's Blair?"

Tea looked at him as if he'd grown a second head. "In Llanview, I guess."

"She's okay? Don't lie to me, Delgado!"

"The last time I talked to her, she was fine." Tea looked baffled, and more than a little hurt. He couldn't bring himself to care.

He groaned with exasperation. As if Blair's fate mattered to Delgado. She'd probably thrown Blair out another window if Blair had somehow miraculously gotten out of the trunk of Margaret's car. "What about Starr? You at least care about Starr!"

"Of course I love Starr!" Tea protested angrily, but he couldn't hear her. He could only hear Starr.

_"Mom. She tried looking for you so hard. She knew that you didn't run out on her. She didn't believe any of the things anyone said. Why isn't Mom here? She's okay, isn't she?"_

"No. No, Honey, she's not okay. Sweetie, Mom's not gonna come back. She died."

"You're lying to me. Mom's not dead! Why are you lying to me?"

"I tried to save her."

"No, you didn't! She wouldn't be dead! It's all your fault! People don't just die! You killed her!"

"Don't say that to me, please, Starr."

"We were going to be a family again. You were getting married until you made that crazy lady mad at you. You ruin everything. I believed in you. I had faith in you when everybody said you ran away from us. I knew you would never do that. I never gave up. And now you're back and you ruin everything. Mom's not here, and I am never going to see her again, and it is all your fault. I hate you and I never want to see you again!"  
  
"Starr was here. I saw Starr!"

"Starr hasn't been here," said Tea cooly. "She's been in Paraguay. Now, Dani- she's been here."

"Why would I give a damn about-" A horrible thought occurred to him. "You're working with her, aren't you? You went crazy enough to work with her?"

"Working with who?" Tea was crying again.

"The crazy bitch who tied me to a bed for months on end! Who do you think?"

"Irene is dead. Allison is in prison. Neither one of them is working with anyone."

"Who the fuck are Irene and Allison?"

Tea backed slowly away from him. "I'll get the doctor."

* * *

When Tea reached the lounge, the first thing she did was kick over an end table.

The second thing she did was call Dani.

When Dani didn't pick up, but instead texted that she would return the call momentarily, Tea shoved the pile of magazines off the next end table.

Perhaps she shouldn't have called Dani at all. Dani might be better off thinking that nothing had changed, rather than knowing that the man she had fussed over and prayed over and built her life around had woken up and asked for Starr.

The very first thing Tea had ever promised Dani was that Dani would never feel like a second class citizen. She wouldn't have to fight for everything she got- not a good education, not acceptance from her peers, and certainly not the affections of Todd Manning. She hadn't introduced Dani to Walker (Todd, as he'd been then) until she'd been absolutely sure that Dani would never come second to Starr the way Tea had come second to Blair.

The revelation that Walker wasn't Todd had been humiliating, but the humiliation had been overwhelmed by grief as soon as Walker had been shot and nearly killed. Tea didn't care what the man called himself or who he had been before they met; she and he and Dani loved each other, and the twinge of never having won out over Blair and her brood of charming miscreants paled in comparison to that. She had put aside the destructive bitterness that colored her time with the real Todd Manning and been the better for it.

Then Walker had woken up asking for Blair and Starr. The acidic taint of his words- Blair Starr Blair Starr Blair Starr Blair Starr- as he all but ignored the woman who had been sitting by his side for months threatened to smother her. She screamed out loud just before the phone rang with Dani's promised returned call.

It wasn't until Tea opened her mouth that she was certain she planned to tell the truth. "He woke up, m'hija. He woke up again, and this time he spoke. He knew who I was."

Dani was on the other side of the island, but Tea was sure she could have heard her daughter's scream of joy without the benefit of a phone. "I'll be right there. I'll be right there."

"I have to warn you first," Tea managed to say before Dani hung up. "He's confused. He knew me, but he was very deeply confused. I think he thought he was in some other time or place. He may not remember you right away. I'm not sure he knows he isn't Todd."

"Like I care!" said Dani. "He's awake, and I know who he is. That's all that matters."

Dani was generous in a way Tea knew that she would never be. It was one of the things Tea loved about her.

As it happened, ten minutes' consciousness did wonders for Walker's memory. Even before Dani arrived, Walker began asking for her. Tea watched the father-daughter reunion happily.

Still, Tea asked Dani not to change her status on MyFace to "he's awake!" Dani agreed that the situation was tenuous, and of course she would not tempt fate.

Dani less agreeable when Tea asked her not to call Starr. "Starr is in Paraguay," Tea wheedled. "She can't get here, and if there's a setback and she feels like she missed her chance... I just couldn't do that to Estrella."

"I'd want to know," Dani insisted. "If it were me I'd want to know." Finally, she heaved an enormous sigh. "What about Jack? You have a reason I can't call him?"

"Telling Jack without telling Starr, and with Sam being too young to understand... don't you think that opens up a whole can of worms? Wouldn't it be better to let Walker come back into their lives on his own terms and his own two feet?"

Reluctantly, Dani acquiesced. Tea breathed a sigh of relief. The more time the three of them had alone as the family they were meant to be, the better.

The more time she had to prepare for battle, the better.

They spent the next months working with Walker as he progressed through physical therapy. As his body grew stronger, so too did his mind. He remembered everything about Irene and Allison; he knew that he was not Todd Manning. He even seemed to recall snatches of his early life as Walker Laurence, although he didn't much like to share those with Tea. "Raised on a farm, met my crazy brother, blah blah blah. Who cares?" he would ask. "Nothing mattered until I met you."

He sensed that Tea had been upset by his earlier confusion and he tried to joke her out of it. "When crazy women who aren't you tie me to a bed, it all blends together," he told her. "But from now on, it's only going to be you. You know I love you?"

"I love you, too," she said, but the memory of his asking for Blair still crept out of the dark corners of her mind whenever she had a moment's rest.

When Walker eventually pointed out that he was strong enough to go to Llanview and he needed to, at the very least, see Sam and Jack in person, Tea was almost relieved that the moment of the big test had arrived.

* * *

**The Green Goblin—Part 1**

Sam's first day of second grade was both good and bad. The good was seeing his friends he hadn't seen all summer and his new backpack (Spiderman, of course). The bad was the way Bree would not shut up.

Most of the time Bree was Sam's best cousin. They had spent the night at each other's houses at least once a week all summer. If Bree climbed a tree, Sam climbed higher. If Sam dove into the pool, Bree dove deeper. If someone had told Sam in June that Bree's desk would be right next to his on the first day of second grade in September, he would have shouted with joy.

But in June, Sam's best cousin had been Bree Brennan.

Now she was Bree Brennan _Lovett_.

And she spent the day introducing herself to all of their classmates, who they'd known since birth, as if Bree were the mayor (Sam knew about mayors) and none of them had ever met before.

"I'm Bree Brennan _Lovett_," she'd announce, sometimes even holding out her hand for the other girls to shake. "Brody _Lovett_ adopted me. He's my daddy now."

By the tenth time Sam heard it, he found his fingers clenching around his brand new Spiderman pencil case while he imagined shoving it down Bree's throat.

Sam had been happy for Bree when Brody had adopted her. Because Sam and Bree were best cousins, Aunt Jessica (not really his aunt, but calling her that was easier) had taken Sam along to the ceremony and then to the party they'd had after. That very day, Uncle Brody (also not really Sam's uncle) pointed out that _Lovett_ was close to _Manning_ in the alphabet and they'd probably be next to each other if they lined up by alphabetical order at school. Bree and Sam had jumped up and danced around the restaurant. Someone had taken their picture, and Aunt Viki (Sam wasn't sure whether she was his real aunt) had framed it and put it on the table right by her front door.

Bree had wanted Brody to adopt her since she had learned the word "adopt." For as long as Sam had known her, Bree had said that she wanted Brody to be her daddy. Sometimes Aunt Jessica would hear, and tell Bree that just because her Daddy Nash was in heaven, that didn't make him not her daddy and didn't Bree remember him? Aunt Jessica would get more and more upset, and eventually Bree would say that now she remembered her Daddy Nash, then roll her eyes at Sam because she really didn't and Aunt Jessica should have realized that.

Nash Brennan wasn't around to pick Bree up from dance class or take her out for ice cream. Brody Lovett was.

Sam's Daddy Walker wasn't around to do any of those things either (not that Sam wanted to go to dance class), but he wasn't dead, like Nash Brennan. He was in Tahiti. Sam didn't see a difference between Tahiti and dead, really.

He wished Bree would get over it already.

Midway through the day Sam realized he'd forgotten his crayons and Bree shared hers, including the reddest red, which was both of their favorite. Even that didn't make him completely forgive her.

At dinner, after school was over, Mom told Sam that Bree was coming over for pizza on Sunday. Starr said that she and Travis didn't have plans that day, so couldn't Travis come over for a family night? The answer was yes, of course, and that Jack should invite a friend, too, if he wanted.

Jack grunted something around a mouthful of steak.

"Does Bree have to come over?" Sam asked.

"Did you and Bree have a fight?"

Sam shrugged at his mother, and he was glad when Jack started talking about how this year there was going to be a girl on the soccer team and some of the guys thought she should just play field hockey like other girls did in the fall, but other guys thought it would be an advantage because she was definitely really good if she wanted to risk it. Jack was the junior captain this year—he'd been varsity as a freshman, so that was no surprise—and he thought he'd bring the senior captain on Sunday night so they could work on solidarity. Uncle Todd (used to be Sam's real uncle, but not anymore) started talking about team dynamics and leadership and Sam tuned it out and drew faces in his mashed potatoes.

He didn't notice that Uncle Todd was paying attention to him instead of Jack until Uncle Todd reached across the table and added green beans to the top of Sam's mashed potato face like hair.

"What's going on, Sam?" Uncle Todd asked when Sam looked at him.

"Why don't you adopt me and be my dad like Uncle Brody did with Bree?"

For a split second, Sam thought that that was all it would take. Uncle Todd looked happy about the idea—Sam knew he did.

But then Mom and Uncle Todd told Jack to clear the table and told Starr to get Hope and Sage ready for bed while they talked to Sam alone. They told Sam the same things Aunt Jessica had always told Bree. That just because Sam's daddy wasn't with him, that didn't mean that he didn't already have a daddy. That Uncle Todd loved Sam just as much as he loved Starr and Jack and Sage even though someone else was Sam's daddy. That Sam would see his real daddy again someday.

Sam rolled his eyes the way Bree always had.

* * *

"Thank you, Todd," Blair said into the quiet darkness of their bedroom late that night.

"What for?" asked Todd. He was making his usual round of the room, checking every window to see that it was secure. He had already run downstairs twice to re-check the front door, opening it each time to make sure no one had left their keys in the lock. It made Blair sad, but she never tried to stop him. She was in favor of anything that assuaged his fears—grounded in reality or otherwise—that he might be taken from his family again.

"For being so kind to Walker's little boy."

"He's your little boy, too," Todd slipped into bed beside Blair, but not close enough to touch. "That still surprises you? That I love Sam? It's been over a year."

"I know." Blair sighed. It was true. "Sorry."

Todd sighed more heavily than Blair had. "Don't be. I know where you're coming from. There's no statute of limitations on what I did to Jack. To you."

"But I forgave you." She reached for him in the dark and was glad when his hand tightened on hers.

"It wasn't a lie," Todd said. "I love Sam as much as I love every other kid in this house. More. He never needs his diapers changed and he never comes stomping in here trying to make everyone else miserable because something went wrong in his love life."

"That'll be here before we know it."

"I'd adopt him if I could, Blair. I'd do it in a second if it were possible. He should have been mine, anyway."

"You should have been tied up and raped?"

"Your kids should be our kids no matter how they get here. Not saying I'm not partial to, say, the way Sage got here. We should have built an elevator into this place so we could re-enact it."

"We'll have to get right on that," Blair agreed.

"I'll work on it while you and Jack go horse shopping next weekend," Todd suggested. It was not the first time he had made that suggestion.

"Jack and I are not going anywhere," said Blair. "I'm not going to be away from Sage for that long." It was not the first time she had refused.

"It's one weekend. Three days at the most. Back when Jack and I bought Boreas for you, I said that the two of you could go pick out his horse together. Next weekend is going to be the only weekend he doesn't have a soccer game until the middle of winter."

"We can pick out his horse without it taking all weekend. There are farms within driving distance-"

"When Jack was Sage's age, there were days I kept him away from you that you never got back. I get that."

_Starr, too, _thought Blair spitefully, though she didn't say it while Todd was being so sweet. "That's not what this is about."

"Then what do you think is going to happen with Sage if you leave her with her father for three days?"

Blair didn't have an answer, although that didn't mean there wasn't one


	2. Chapter 2

It was an odd sort of guilt over implying that she did not trust Todd with their children that convinced Blair to give the whole weekend over to horse-hunting with Jack. She couldn't put her finger on exactly why she was worried about Sam in particular, even more so than Sage.

She and Jack drove south early Friday morning, winding their way to all the stables that advertised horses for sale, with plans to end the weekend at an auction if all else failed. Jack read an online ad aloud as they turned into a mid-sized farm.

"Stunning, amateur-safe warmblood gelding. $15,000, bay, white blaze, three white socks, age 6, 16.3 hands, 1100 lbs, foaled: 2006. Absolutely beautiful. Placed fifth in the country at warmblood inspection for the year. Beautifully put together. Just started— solid walk/trot/canter. Brave and very smart over jumps— and loves to jump! Amazing canter. Jumping 2 ft 9" courses. Steady and sane without being lazy. Fun ride for anyone. Sired by Pine Bar. Dam is our own—"

Jack broke off so sharply that Blair looked at him with concern. "You all right?"

"Turn around, please," said Jack. "I can't go into this place."

Blair tapped the break and took Jack's iPad out of his hand. She scanned down to the ad he'd been reading.

_Sired by Pine Bar. Dam is our own Gigi's Dream._

Even though Blair hated to discredit her children's feelings, she was tempted to tell Jack that it was just a name, and not some sort of sign. A year ago, she'd been afraid that he would never show any kind of regret or compassion for what he'd done to Shane and Gigi Morasco. Now she worried that he'd never be out from under it.

"All right," she told him. "We'll turn around. We'll take a break and then we'll go on to the next one. We keep moving forward, don't we?"

Jack retrieved his iPad and brought up their itinerary. "We can keep looking for a pony for Hope and Sam if you want. Boreas needs the company. But I don't want a horse of my own."

Blair's heart sank at Jack's self-imposed punishment, but she made herself sound cheerful when she spoke. "That's just too bad, because your father wants to buy you a horse."

Jack ignored her and tapped the iPad some more. "Let's go straight to that place in Virginia that had all the ponies. With the kids' camp next door?"

"Fine," Blair agreed. If Jack didn't fall in love while they were ostensibly looking only for Hope and Sam, she'd push the issue tomorrow.

Before the afternoon was out, they'd put a deposit on Tetris, a cobby gelding barely twelve hands high. He had spent the past five of his fourteen years in a lesson program working with beginning riders. That should have left him equally capable of handling Sam's rambunctiousness and Hope's timidity, not to mention Boreas' periodic mood swings. "Mostly Welsh pony, but he's a mix," the resident trainer told them as they inspected every inch of Tetris' dark bay coat. Jack and Blair left with promises to return early the next morning to finalize the sale as long as Tetris did not develop any mysterious ailments in the meantime.

* * *

Sam was very interested in the day's lesson- he liked math because he always saw Starr and Jack studying it and wanted to catch up to them- and so he didn't even notice that he had a visitor until Bree, wide-eyed, poked him and pointed.

His father, who was supposed to be in Tahiti, was standing right outside the window.

Without asking permission, Sam ran from the room as a chorus of tattle-tales shouted "Mrs. Hicks! Mrs. Hicks! Sam is out of his seat!"

Walker picked Sam up and pulled him high in the air so they were eye-to-eye. "Hi, Sammy!"

"I didn't know you were coming!"

"That's because I wanted to surprise you."

Mrs. Hicks told Walker to leave right away, and Walker apologized for interrupting, explaining that it had been over a year since he'd seen his son. Mrs. Hicks softened, and agreed that class was almost over and since Walker was Sam's parent of record with the school, they could leave right away.

"I'm supposed to call Mom and Uncle Todd if I go home with someone besides them or Starr or Jack or Bree," Sam remembered

"I talked to your Mom," said Walker. "She's not even in town, right, she's off buying horses with Jack? So of course it would be my weekend with you. You remember you used to have some days with me and some days with her, right?"

"Right," Sam agreed. It made sense.

"And I wouldn't know where Mom and Jack are if I didn't talk to her, right?"

"Right," Sam agreed again, and he didn't think much more of it because it had always been special not to have to share Dad with Jack.

* * *

The hotel restaurant was crowded, so Jack and Blair sat at the bar. Jack stared fixedly at the bartender as he mixed drinks. The man really was a bit of an artist, so Blair let Jack get lost in his daydream until the bartender ducked away in search of fresh limes.

(Jack himself was drinking a Shirley Temple, which was suddenly an acceptable drink among teenage boys in the Philadelphia area thanks to the Philadelphia 76ers baby-faced point guard, Jrue Holiday. Upon being drafted at the age of 18, he had made a public show of never drinking while underage, but instead asking for extra cherries in his Shirley Temple. Blair was tempted to write him a thank you note.)

"Hey," said Blair. "How're you doing?"

"Bartenders have to know how to make a lot of drinks," said Jack blandly.

"Soccer players have to know a lot of different moves," she said. "Learn any new ones lately?"

"Mostly how to keep a bunch of guys from rioting because the school decided to go for the publicity of having a girl on the boys' team."

"Is she good?"

Jack gulped his soda and nodded, more himself since they were off the subject of horses. "Good enough to play, even though she's only a freshman. Not a starter or anything, but she's fast and she's tough. She could sub here and there. But that means she'd be the star of the girls' team in the spring if she'd play field hockey now and soccer then."

"Does she say why she doesn't?"

"She wants to play softball in the spring." Jack shrugged, as if nothing could be done about that. "And she says field hockey skirts are stupid and no one plays field hockey in New York. She says it's archaic."

"She's from New York?"

Jack cocked his head curiously. "You don't know?"

"Don't know what?"

"That we're talking about Jamie Vega?"

Blair almost choked on her wine. (She couldn't breastfeed Sage while she and Jack were traveling, so she was indulging in her first glass of wine in what seemed like forever. It would have been a shame to waste any of it.) "Yes, Jack, you may have forgotten to mention that."

"I thought you knew! You know how Aunt Dorian is always all I _practically raised those boys_. That makes Jamie _practically_ her granddaughter, and Jamie's doing something that's usually all guys. I'm surprised Aunt Dorian's not on C-Span crowing about it."

"Give her time," Blair suggested. Jack wasn't wrong. Carlotta must have deliberately withheld the news from Dorian. "I didn't even know Antonio and Talia were back in Llanview. Or did they just send Jamie?"

"No, it's all of them." Jack slurped the last of his soda and the bartender gracefully replaced it with a full glass. "Maybe that's why it's a secret. It sounds like Talia sucks at taking care of the baby and they needed help, so they had to come back to where their family is."

"Jack! You have personal experience with how much hard work a new baby is. Everyone needs help."

"I saw Talia when she came to pick Jamie up yesterday. She looked weird. Wiped out. Like, more than what's normal when a baby screams all night."

"Maybe its postpartum depression," Blair mused. "When I saw her at Cristian's wedding, Talia didn't look like she was enjoying being pregnant at all."

"Do any women enjoy being pregnant?" asked Jack dubiously. "Always seemed pretty damn miserable to me. You hurt all the time, you're not allowed to do anything fun, everybody judges you, you're always scared, and you get fat."

Blair laughed and couldn't resist leaning over on her stool to hug Jack. "I loved being pregnant with you."

"You mean when Dad hated you so much he gave me away and told you I was dead? When he was so awful you had to run away to Mexico to get away from him?"

"I didn't run away to Mexico to get away from him," said Blair, even though she had.

"Dad said you did," Jack trumped. "And he said it when he was really trying to get me to like him, so I don't think he'd say it if he didn't think he had to."

Blair saw her opportunity. "He's worked hard to make it up to you and connect with you. And one of the things he would like to do is buy you a horse."

Jacks lips thinned out and he shook his head. "When I saw that name, I knew it was a sign. It had to be."

"And sometimes you're a lot like your father."

Jack snorted and stabbed at his cherries with his straw. "I haven't heard that since before we all decided that this guy was my father."

"He's always been your father," said Blair quietly. "He worries that the things he's done in the past mean that he and our family can never be happy. Last year, when we were in Key West, after he and I left you kids on the beach—"

Jack clapped his hands over his ears and flushed red. "I do not want to hear what you did next. Starr might think it's romantic, but I never needed to have anyone look at Sage's birthday and do the math."

Blair tried hard not to laugh at his embarrassment. "That's not what I was going to say. What I was going to say was that later that day we were stuck in an elevator. Your father thought it was some sort of sign that he was being punished for marrying me. He thought that—I'm not sure exactly what he thought, maybe that Irene would come back to life and hurt us. But sometimes a broken elevator is just a broken elevator. Sometimes the name of a horse is just the name of a horse."

"I thought you'd say something like that."

"Maybe that's because you know I'm right."

Jack produced his iPad and handed it to Blair. "If I have to have a horse, how about this one? He's a lost cause, just like me."

Blair read the advertisement:

_Free horse. Sasha is a 2005 dapple grey registered purebred Egyptian Arabian gelding who needs a home with an advanced rider and a large pasture for consistent turnout as he is extremely high energy. He needs to stretch his legs and be a horse. He is suitable for light riding only. Okay with bathing, clipping, and trailering. Not suitable as a resale project. Not suitable for beginners or new horse owners. Not suitable for children._

"No way, Jack."

"I could handle him. If I can handle Boreas, I can handle this one."

"You are not going to have a horse that dangerous around your little brother and sister."

"Boreas is dangerous."

"Not until you get on his back. He doesn't bite or kick. Hope got under his feet last week and he stood like a statue until Starr got her out of there."

"Starr has a two-headed poisonous snake that she smuggled out of South America!"

"Tweedledee and Tweedledum aren't poisonous," said Blair, although she privately had some doubt about Starr's assurances on that issue. "Besides, they live up on a high shelf in Starr's room where Hope and Sam know they aren't supposed to go. When Starr closes her bedroom door, they can't get in without a key. I want the younger kids to have the run of the stable."

Jack took the iPad back in defeat. "Whatever."

"You are not a lost cause and that horse is not a lost cause, but you don't get to be the one to help him. Not this time."

Their food arrived in front of them just in time to end the conversation.

* * *

Todd let himself in the back door of Llanfair in the hopes of avoiding anyone other than Viki or Jessica. Luckily, Jessica and Bree happened to be sitting on the floor with an elaborate doll between them.

"Hi Uncle Todd," said Jessica, nonplussed. She was used to him not announcing himself like a normal person. "What's up?"

"Where's Sam?"

Jessica's eyes widened with horror. "Bree," she said dangerously, "you told me Sam went home with Uncle Todd."

"He _did_," said Bree. She backed slowly away from Jessica, terrified to see her mother angry.

"No, he didn't," corrected Todd. It took all of his strength not to jump out of his skin and shout at Jessica's little daughter. Blair had finally been convinced to accept him as a partner in their family, and he hadn't lasted a day before losing the boy she had convinced herself he didn't really want. He was going to wring someone's neck, but it wouldn't be Bree's.

Bree burst into tears and made to run from the room, but Jessica grabbed her. "Bree, baby, no one's mad at you. We just need to know what you saw."

"I told you!" said Bree indignantly. "I told you he went with his Daddy."

Jessica paled. "And I told you that you meant Uncle Todd."

"Well, he used to be Uncle Todd!"

Todd extracted a photograph of Viki and Walker from the thousands of pictures cluttered on the accent table. He shoved it in Bree's teary face. "This is who Sam is with?"

"Yes," Bree confirmed.

Todd stormed out of Llanfair, ignoring Jessica's shouted apologies and suggestions of an Amber Alert. He didn't need the police to tell him where Walker would take Sam. Walker didn't want to make any secret of who he was or what he was doing- if he had, he never would have taken Sam in front of dozens of witnesses, at least one of whom knew exactly who he was.

This wasn't about spiriting Sam away, never to be seen again.

This wasn't about catching up with Sam, either. Walker could have told them that he was awake and functioning. He could have asked Blair for time with Sam. Blair would have granted it.

This was about Todd. This was Walker humiliating Todd, undermining Todd to Blair, and demonstrating that he could still take Todd's children away whenever he wanted to.

Todd had made great strides with Jack in the past year, but he would never be the father who had taken Jack to his first horror movie or taught him to play soccer. All those memories were Walker's, and Todd couldn't steal them back the way Walker had stolen Todd's memories.

It took Todd short minutes to reach the house Walker had shared with Tea and Danielle before they'd all left for Tahiti. Todd had left the house in Tea's name without a fight, a small generous act which he now regretted.

Walker opened the door with a smirk as soon as Todd approached.

"Remember that time you 'borrowed' Sam because you wanted to talk to me?" Walker asked.

The self-control Todd had just barely managed to pull together in front of Bree vanished.

He punched Walker, hard, in the jaw.

The next several minutes were a flurry of kicks and punches. Walker had the unfair advantage of knowing exactly how Todd thought and how Todd had learned to fight. Todd had the perfectly fair advantage of not having spent the past year in a coma, and also of being extraordinarily pissed off.

At some point, Walker stopped fighting and Todd kept hitting until Tea pulled him by the hair and screamed at him in Spanish. He understood exactly what she said because the only words she used were obscenities.

He didn't stop because Walker had stopped or because Tea was yelling.

He stopped because Sam was standing on the stairs with his mouth hanging open in disbelief.

Todd regrouped as best as he could when his blood was pumping and his knuckles were bruising. "Sam," he said, "You know you're not supposed to go leave school except with Mom and me or your brother and sister. Or someone on Bree's list."

"But he's my dad," said Sam.

"Yeah," mimicked Walker. "I'm his dad."

"I asked you to be my dad, and you didn't want to," Sam pointed out.

The smirk fell off of Walker's face. It was less satisfying than Todd would have thought. "Tea," said Walker, "file those papers."

* * *

On Saturday morning, Blair and Jack returned to finalize the purchase of Tetris. As Blair signed the paperwork, a red roan sauntered over to the edge of a field to whinny at Tetris. "That better be goodbye and not hello," a stable hand said. "No one wants to buy you, because you're a pain in the ass."

Jack, of course, had to have a closer look. "Who is this?" he asked.

"Ginger," the stablehand told him. "Genuine Wyoming mustang. Jumps, does dressage, goes 25 miles a day through the mountains, and a pain in the ass. Can't work at the youth camp."

"Does she bite?"

"No, nothing like that. But she gets nervous when we give her a new rider, and at youth camp we need the horses to take a new kid a few times a day, you know?"

"She for sale?"

"Two grand."

Seeing where Blair's attention had drifted the manager launched into a genuine sales pitch. "Fifteen hands, 1100 pounds. She's been here since 2008. There's no quit in her. As sure footed as any horse around here. She'll go anywhere she can get through. Strong, too. No reason not to breed her if you'd like. She just needs to be handled by the same people every day."

"Can Jack try her?" Blair asked. She hadn't even put her checkbook away; the answer was obvious.

"Sure thing. But remember, she'll be more skittish because she doesn't know him. That's why she's a bargain."

As soon as Blair saw Jack on Ginger's back, she wrote a second check and handed it to the manager. The manager grinned. "You save on shipping this way."

She had come into this trip expecting Jack to choose a horse with a pedigree as long as the Llantano river and a price tag ten times higher than Ginger's. She certainly hadn't expected Jack to choose a mare.

Her children always found ways to surprise her. 


	3. Chapter 3

Blair's good mood, earned by a wonderful weekend with Jack, evaporated the instant she and Jack returned home.

"Blair Cramer Manning?" the messenger demanded.

"Yes," she answered, while Jack froze beside her.

"You've been served."

He vanished before she could fumble the envelope open.

She didn't need to give any kind of through reading to the documents inside. She'd seen variations on this theme too many times in her life._ Petition for Sole Custody of Minor Child…_

"Todd!"  
  
He came when she called, and with the sight of him her fear morphed into determination and her anger became calculation. Security wasn't a familiar feeling to Blair, but now that Todd was on her side…

She flung herself into his arms, viscerally aware that they'd been apart for more than two days and she'd missed his touch and his scent and his physical presence in her life.

How had she lasted eight years without him?

He grabbed the envelope with one hand while leaving the other protectively around her shoulders.

His face contorted with disgust. "They did it already?"

Blair leaned away ever so slightly. "You knew this was coming?"

Todd rolled his shoulders like he was preparing for battle. "Walker showed up at Sam's school on Friday afternoon."

"You knew about this and you didn't call me?" Blair asked, making a mental note to give herself a beating for entertaining thoughts about Todd giving her safety and security.

_"My Dad is back and you didn't tell me?"_ shouted Jack simultaneously.

Blair's heart shattered when she felt Todd flinch against her side.

"Why don't you go call him?" Todd asked innocently. "I'm sure it's an oversight that he didn't call you himself."

Jack stomped into the house and up the stairs to his room, anger radiating off of him in waves.

"Guy didn't even send Jack a text to let him know he was awake, and he's already Dad again," Todd muttered. "Want to take bets on how soon I hear Scarface?"

"If you do, Jack's going to be sorry he demanded that little tower in his room, because that's where he's going to be for a week if he says it."

"I'm sure that'll just make him decide that I'm his father and he likes me after all."

"He knows who his father is," Blair assured, leaning into Todd again. "All that work the two of you put in this past year—that means something. He's just shocked."

"I knew this was going to happen. As soon as I saw Walker standing there smirking at me. I knew I was going to lose Jack all over again."

Blair took the papers back from Todd. "It's not Jack he has a claim on. It's Sam. And I get why you didn't tell Jack, but why the hell didn't you tell me? Why did you let me get blindsided by this?"

"I should have," said Todd. "I thought we could make it through the weekend. I wanted you to have the weekend. You and Jack, both."

Blair sighed. His intentions had been good; she had to admit that. She would just have to accept that he would always underestimate Tea Delgado.

"Let's go inside, and you can tell me everything that happened."

Starr met them in the kitchen, where Todd had found a bottle of scotch and two tumblers to accompany his story. "What's going on?" Starr demanded. "Jack started slamming every door in the house just when I got Sage down for her nap. Hi, Mom," she added belatedly, giving Blair a hug.

Todd drank a shot, grimaced, and began his story. "On Friday night I went over to Viki's to pick Sam up."

"And that made you need a drink and turned Jack back into that thing he was last year?" asked Starr.

"It's called an introduction," Todd told Starr. "Maybe if you came into The Sun sometimes instead of spending all your time singing to reptiles, you would know that."

Starr made a face. Blair pushed the second tumbler of scotch at her daughter; she wanted to get back to breast feeding as soon as Sage woke up from her nap.

"But when I got to Viki's, Sam wasn't there," Todd continued. "It turned out that he'd gone home with his father."

"And Viki didn't bother to call you?" asked Blair. Her hand clenched into a fist involuntarily. Of course Viki would hand Sam over to Walker and Tea. Viki had always wanted Blair's children to be Tea's, anyway.

"Jessica, actually. Bree told her what happened and Jessica blew it off. I think she must have lost a few brain cells when she sprouted all of those Tess, Bess, Wes, people. So I went straight over to that rape shack, which I should have sold—no, I should have burned it. Or we could have tracked Marty down and let her burn it. But yeah, there they were. Walker, Tea, and Sam, just like nothing ever happened."

"And they told you they were going to file for custody?" Blair prompted.

Starr gasped. Blair shoved the petition in her direction, and Starr began reading anxiously.

"Well, they sort of implied that after I pounded the shit out of Walker."

"Dad!"

"Todd!"

"He took Sam. He took you, and he took you, and he took Jack, and just as soon as he came back he wanted to remind me that he could do it again. He's lucky I didn't put him into another coma. I should have. He wouldn't have been able to petition for custody from there."

"And you would have been back in prison, and wouldn't that be nice," said Blair.

"Maybe if you apologize, they'll work something out for shared custody," Starr tried.

Todd looked at Starr with a mixture of disbelief and pity. "If that was what they wanted, why didn't he come and ask to see Sam? Why did he just take him? Are you honestly telling me that you don't see some kind of signal in that?"

Starr pursed her lips. "No."

Blair leaned back against the wall. "This is going to get so ugly so fast. Todd, what if they want to take Sam and go back to Tahiti?"

"Doesn't matter," said Todd. "If they make this all or nothing, they aren't going to win."

"Tea Delgado doesn't lose," said Blair. "Except when she's sleeping with the opposition."

"Well, that's not an option," said Todd hastily.

"The amount of dirt that they have to fling at us- we don't have any deep, dark secrets that they don't know."

"That goes both ways."

"And the minute they call Jack up to testify, if he's in anything like the mood he's in now..."

"Forget about Jack," said Starr sharply as she looked up from the legal documents, which she had read from cover to cover. "Mom, I promise you. No one is taking Sam away from you and giving him to Walker and Tea when I get done testifying."

Blair cupped Starr's chin in her hand. "That's sweet, Beautiful. But you won't go to the lengths Jack will."

"Says who?"

"You love Walker and Tea," Blair reminded.

Starr shrugged. "Jack loves you and Dad."

"What exactly are you going to say, Shorty?"

"I'll start with how Walker threw me down a flight of stairs when I was pregnant and I woke up in the hospital an hour later. Then I'll tell the judge how he decided to steal my baby and have me told that she was dead, and that cost me the first six months of Hope's life."

"But Starr," said Blair gently, "There's a legal record of you saying that you made that story up. You confessed to perjury."

"So I'll tell the judge how the plaintiff's attorney, Ms. Delgado, snuck into my house and told me that if I didn't perjure myself, my father would commit suicide and it would be all my fault that my little brothers would grow up half-orphaned."

"She did _what_?" demanded Todd.

"Oh, yes," said Blair.

"I'll tell the judge how I was barely seventeen years old and I went to my dead baby's grave and cried and cried about how I betrayed her to save my father's life."

"He wasn't your father!"

"No," said Starr coolly. "He wasn't. I swear to God, right around then I told Aunt Dorian why I was having trouble just writing him out of my life. And you know what I said?" She laughed humorlessly. "I said 'It's like he's two different people.' Well, now I know which one of those people should be around a child if I have to choose." She grabbed Todd's hand with her left and then reached across the table to grab Blair's hand with her right. "If this comes down to taking sides, I am on yours."

On cue, Jack banged into the kitchen. "Isn't that surprising," he drawled sarcastically.

"Were you eavesdropping?" asked Starr.

"What? You're the only one who's allowed to do that?" He banged to refrigerator open. "We were driving for, like, five hours. I wanted food. This is where it is. Sorry to interrupt you while you were trying to steal somebody's kid."

"Nobody is trying to steal anyone," said Starr. "Walker is the one who filed the custody suit."

"And he had to do it because when he tried to see his son, this guy beat him up!"

"That's not what happened!"

"Whatever. He's Sam's dad and he wants to see Sam. I just think it's ridiculous that you're all trying to make him public enemy number one for that."

"He's Sam's dad, and Mom is Sam's mom."

Jack opened his mouth.

"Adoption makes you just as much a parent as biology!" snapped Starr, before Jack could suggest otherwise.

"Of course it does, and the judge will have to take that into consideration," said Todd.

Blair was silent. She wasn't going to say it. She couldn't.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack waited three days before he called Walker. Three days of peeking out classroom doors when he was supposed to be looking at the smartboard; three days of isolating himself on the edge of the soccer field so someone watching him would have a chance to approach; three days of lingering when he got in and out of his car in an empty parking lot or driveway.

He'd been hoping that Walker would just show up at his school like he had done with Sam. Jack really hadn't needed anyone to rub his face in the fact that Walker hadn't reached out to him. Naturally, his father had made a point of highlighting it anyway.

Stupid _Scarface_.

Jack wasn't going to go back to calling him that out loud or anything, but it gave him a modicum of pleasure to think it in the private of his own head.

He worked himself up to being good and mad at both of the Todds Manning so nothing Walker said would hurt him before he hit the speed dial he'd never removed from his phone. (He had, however, changed the contact name from "Dad" to "ZZZ" so it would stay at the bottom of his contacts list and he would never have to see it by accident and wonder how Walker was doing and whether he would approve of the way Jack's life was going now.)

Walker answered on the first ring, as if he had been waiting for Jack's call. Jack wouldn't flatter himself, though.

"Jackson! What took you so long?" It sounded jovial, but Jack's hackles rose. He knew there was an accusation in there somewhere.

"What took me so long? You've been in a coma and you didn't tell me you were awake, let alone that you were in Llanview!"

"I knew you'd find out from Sam. I couldn't just call you, Jack. You're underage and you're not my biological son. Your mother and that guy she married would use that against me, like I was trying to do something to their kid he didn't want. It would screw up me ever getting to see you or Sam again. They don't even want me to see Sam. I had to file a custody suit."

"I know."

"You think I was wrong to do that? You on their side now?"

"No! No, of course not. They're wrong and I told them they're wrong. Them and Starr." The old feeling of being in Starr's shadow washed over him as he remembered the sight of Starr with their parents' hands in hers, the perfect trinity with no need for anyone else. "She's already planning to go crying to the judge about everything that happened with Hope. She's going to say you threw her down the stairs. She's going to say Tea made her perjure herself."

"She'll say what she has to say and you'll say what you have to say. Won't you?"

Jack rolled his eyes. As if anyone ever cared what he had to say. "I'll say that you never came looking for me or called me because you didn't want to do anything to hurt your chances with Sam."

"I'll come over tonight. Right now," said Walker abruptly. "I'll ask your parents' permission to see you. If they say yes, we'll go out, just the two of us. Okay?"

"Okay," agreed Jack, though he ended the call with the distinct feeling that seeing him was, at best, Walker's means to an end.

* * *

Tea had been listening intently to Walker's conversation, quiet as could be so Jack wouldn't realize that he was on speakerphone.

"I wish you hadn't said we'd go over," she told him.

"Why not? I'll get some more information from Jack, and you might get a chance to work on Starr. It wouldn't sound good to the judge if I didn't even try to see Jack, right? We have to ask, and have Blair and the jerk forbid it officially. Then it looks like I care."

"_Do_ you care? About Jack?"

"Does it matter?"

Tea didn't like that answer, but she understood why Walker gave it. If he'd said he cared about Jack, that would have taken her right back to the horrible moment in Tahiti when he'd opened his eyes to her but asked for Blair. If he'd said he didn't care about Jack, the boy he'd raised from toddlerhood, Tea would have been afraid that he was lying- and somewhat concerned about sociopathic tendencies. "I'll tell you what _does_ matter. What matters is that our biggest advantage over Todd and Blair is that we know them better than they know us. You lived inside Todd's head. You know every thought, every feeling, every button he has. That's good, because you can say things and do things to throw him off his game. But the more time we spend with them before the first meeting with a judge, the better chance they have to prepare. They aren't stupid. Neither one of them is stupid."

"You're smarter."

Tea smirked. "Goes without saying. Fine. We'll spot them this one reconnaissance mission before we see the judge next week. If we split up, you take Todd and I take Blair."

It wasn't just the most sensible solution.

She didn't want Walker in a room alone with Blair. Blair might not be as smart as Tea, but damned if she didn't have a pull over men, even in her forties and with a new baby- a new baby! Blair had been giving birth to Todd's daughter just as Walker had woken up asking for her.

It was disgusting.

* * *

Blair considered not answering when Walker and Tea knocked on their door, but she supposed that with the pending lawsuit, she had to display a willingness to work with Sam's father. "Don't punch him this time," she reminded Todd.

"Not even if he deserves it?"

"Of course he's going to deserve it. Not the point." Blair was amazed at how quickly she'd gone from feeling legitimate grief at Walker's supposed death to wishing he'd stayed in that coma indefinitely. Threatening to take away her children- without even _talking_ to her first- tended to have that effect.

She opened the door. "Nice to see you, Walker, Tea," she said sweetly. "I wouldn't have known you were in town if it hadn't been for the petition."

"Blair!" Tea grasped Blair's hands warmly. "Why don't you and I sit down in the kitchen and talk about this, you and me, mother to mother. Jack invited us over. Walker wanted to spend some time with him, if that's all right with you."

"It's not all right with me," said Todd. "We need to have a discussion about my son before you say anything to him."

"Then let's have a discussion," said Walker. He wandered into the living room, and Todd followed.

"Blair," Tea wheedled as soon as they were gone. "You don't want to fight this, do you?"

Blair glared, temporarily unable to remember how and why she and Tea had ever become friends.

The next time she threw Tea out a window, she would make sure they were on a higher floor.

"Fight for my child? Yes, Tea, I actually do want to do that."

"_Your_ child?" Tea's voice dropped conspiratorially. "But Blair," she whispered, "you never adopted Sam. Not legally."

It took everything in Blair to keep Tea from seeing her shiver. Tea knew— of course she knew. Just because Blair had forced something that terrified her out of her mind, that didn't mean Walker was required to forget as well. Just because Blair hadn't told Todd, even when the subject of Todd legally adopting Sam had arisen, that didn't mean Walker hadn't told Tea.

Tea was still talking. "As your friend, I feel like I have a responsibility to tell you that you'd have no chance in a courtroom against Sam's natural, legal father."

"I had a chance last time," Blair corrected. "I won when Sam was two years old, and that was when we barely knew each other."

"Walker's conditions have changed. He is able to take care of his son now. I'm sure he wouldn't keep you from _seeing_ Sam. That's what you said to Walker when Todd came back, wasn't it? That you wouldn't have a problem with the children he'd raised and loved as his own for eight years _seeing_ him once in a while, while Todd stepped back into their life like he'd never left."

Blair opened her mouth to say that she and Todd had had to work for every inch they had gained with Jack over the last year thanks to Walker's demand that Jack lie about the death of Gigi Morasco. Tea was prepared, and beat her to it.

"You're going to tell me that it wasn't Todd's fault he lost that time with Starr and Jack? That he didn't decide to be kidnapped and tortured? Walker didn't, either. Walker spent almost a year in and out of a coma, and when he came halfway across the world to reunite with his beloved son—"

"Save it for the jury, Tea."

"There is no jury in a custody case. As I was saying, after an arduous journey—"

"Did you fly first class instead of taking a private jet?"

"Walker was ripped from his child's tender embrace by a vicious stepfather bent on poisoning the boy against him!" Tea concluded with a flourish.

"Todd isn't poisoning Sam. He made a point of making sure Sam knew that he was here for him but that he couldn't take the place of his father because Sam already has a father. Not that that's something I'd expect you to understand."

"Really, Blair? We're going back to that? What happened with Starr a thousand years ago? _Starr_!" Tea shouted.

"_Tea_?" Starr's voice echoed from the far reaches of the house. An instant later, she skipped into view, trailed by Travis. She gave Tea big hug. Tea winked at Blair over Starr's shoulder. "How are you?"

"Wonderful now that Walker is so much better."

"I can't wait to see him."

"He's here talking with your father, but I suppose we shouldn't disturb them," Tea said conspiratorially to Starr. "Luckily, I think your mother and I were done here, so I get you all to myself."

Blair had just been dismissed from her own daughter's presence in her own house.

It was not an unfamiliar experience. Her life had never been the same since Todd had anointed Tea Starr's new mommy almost two decades before.

That didn't mean that she had to rise to the bait. This was a battle that she didn't need to win.

"I do need to check on Sage," Blair told Starr casually, relishing the tiny flash of jealousy in Tea's eyes. Whether Tea was jealous because she wanted to share a child with Walker or because Sage was further proof that Todd loved Blair in a way he had never loved Tea, Blair didn't know. "Starr," she suggested, "Why don't you show Tea that nice setup you and Hope have?"

"Yes, Estrella, I'd love to see Esperanza," Tea gushed, so completely recovered from her slip that Blair almost wondered if she had imagined it.

As promised, Blair went straight to Sage's nursery.

Sage.

Wisdom.

She was not going to allow Tea to bait her into making a rash mistake this time.

_"Did you see Starr playing with my earrings while I was getting ready tonight? It was adorable. Starr was sitting in the middle of our bed while I was getting dressed. I won't, can't take my eyes off her when she's playing dress-up like that. She's like any other kid with her hands in her mommy's jewelry box. The judge will see you're not fit to be Starr's mother. She'll hand Starr over to me just as fast as she can bang a gavel."_

Even if the picture windows in Sage's nursery were just perfect for a defenestration.

* * *

It didn't matter that Todd knew that all four of them were engaged in an elite mind game with Sam as the prize.

It didn't matter that Todd realized that barring Walker from seeing Jack would only drive Jack further away and possibly offset the tiny edge that Blair held when it came to custody of Sam.

He still desperately wanted the pleasure of removing Walker bodily from his house, especially after Walker sauntered into the living room as if he belonged there. It was far too reminiscent of the way Walker had sauntered into Todd's life nine years before and taken Blair, Starr, and Jack as if they had belonged to him.

"Jack is my son," Todd said abruptly. "Blair and I are his parents, and at some level even your comatose brain knows that, since you didn't try to steal him like you tried to steal Sam."

"Sam is _my_ son," Walker returned. "He's my blood. I searched for him. I fought for him. I almost died tracking him down after his crazy mother gave birth to him in some warehouse someplace. I can't steal what belongs to me."

"Why not? You steal everything else," Todd muttered. "But you came here about Jack."

"He invited me. He wanted to see me. You can understand that, can't you? I took him to his first day of school. I taught him to ride a bike. I took him trick-or-treating. I told him bedtime stories. It's not natural for him not to want to see me."

"Nothing about you is natural. You're a freak someone created in a laboratory. And you let the mad scientists do it because you hated yourself so much that you wanted to be me."

"Look in the mirror, Manning. No one wants to be you."

"That wasn't what you thought when you were doing the things I should have been doing."

"You should be thanking me. I raised your kids when you were off being a deadbeat."

Those were the magic words. Half of Llanview still thought he'd somehow been on vacation. Tea's damn brother who had handed him over to Irene had had the nerve to refer to it as "helping Todd out of town."

_"I was locked up! I was being beaten and tortured because that's what it took to keep me away from them. I would never have chosen to leave Starr or Jack or Blair."_

Walker smirked. "Never? Don't try to lie to the guy who lived inside your head for eight years. You left them for Tea. More than once."

"We were shipwrecked! That doesn't count."

"You were shipwrecked because you were trying to keep those kids away from Blair so none of you would ever see her again. Don't sell me this happy family garbage while you're trying to raise my son as some kind of payback for me raising yours."

"Speaking of my children, where's Danielle?" Todd had a vague idea of inviting her over to hang out as payback whenever Walker went after Sam or Jack.

"Tahiti." Walker shook his head with mock sadness. "Just wasn't that anxious to see her sperm donor. Kind of amazing that you actually managed to get Tea pregnant, isn't it?" He bucked his hips. "You are _not_ good at that kind of thing."

Todd's hands were halfway to Walker's throat when a flash of woods outside the window caught his eye. He remembered the first time he had truly studied that view. He had been trying to avoid looking at Blair, naked from the waist down, dipping her fingers between her legs, telling him to do the same.

His hands fell to his side.

He remembered hot white liquid seeping into the floor, just about where Walker stood.

_Marking our territory,_ Blair had called it.

"Why are you smiling?" asked Walker, apparently disappointed that Todd hadn't choked him after all.

"Just glad Delgado finally found someone who's into the same things as she is," said Todd, because the real reason was none of Walker's business.

"Wish I could say the same for Blair," said Walker mildly. "This really isn't fair. I know that you didn't even get your rocks off with my wife, but you don't know what I've done with yours."

"Don't care, either," lied Todd.

"You don't even know what I've seen her do. Should I tell you about the time I come into my own living room to find out she's got her psycho lawyer spread out on my rug? I should send you the cleaning bill for that. Anyway, she's standing over him wearing this dominatrix thing while she's got his hands tied to the-"

"Still don't care," Todd lied some more.

"I know," agreed Walker. "You and your, blah, blah, blah, forever a rapist, can't do anything but missionary with the lights off once every five years because the fun stuff makes you think of Marty, you'd never go for anything that kinky. Blair has to be bored out of her skull."

Loud footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Walker and Todd ended the conversation abruptly.

"_Dad_?"

Todd's heart sank. He knew Jack wasn't talking about him.

Watching Walker embrace Jack sucked.

It sucked so much that he couldn't even remember what he had wanted to warn Walker about before he let him talk to Jack.

"You were going to try to stop him from seeing me, weren't you?" demanded Jack. Now he was addressing Todd. Todd could tell by the way Jack's tone had changed from one of wonder and happiness to one of disgust and loathing. He almost wished Jack had thrown a Scarface in there. Then he would have had an excuse to send Jack back to his room.

"Nothing could keep me from seeing you," said Walker obsequiously.

"You can tell by the way he waited for you to call him," Todd told Jack.

"He was just being respectful of _you_. I don't know why," Jack spat back.

Todd held Jack's angry gaze for a few seconds. It was enough for him to see- thankfully- that Jack had doubts. That gave him hope. "As long as he also respects my request that you be back home in two hours because you have school tomorrow, you can go out with him."

Jack's face lit with delight. Todd preferred a hundred shocks from Baker's chair to this.

* * *

Starr showed Tea her small apartment. There was Starr's beautiful bedroom with a balcony and a fireplace, Hope's beautiful bedroom with a separate walk-in closet just for her stuffed animals, their small kitchen and large living room, the back set of stairs so she could enter and exit without passing through the main house, and the two sets of doors that could shut Hope's room into Starr's apartment or into the main house depending on Starr's schedule.

"You did a beautiful job designing this, Estrella," said Tea quietly as she peeked into the pink darkness at a sleeping Hope.

"I didn't design it." Starr closed the door to Hope's room, suddenly uncomfortable. "Mom did. I came home from Paraguay and Mom and Dad had built this place and were hoping I'd move in."

"It was nice of you to indulge them."

"It's nice of them to help me as much as they do with Hope."

"I'm sure it's their pleasure. Esperanza is a wonderful girl."

"Yes," agreed Starr. "She is."

"I remember when you were that age. That time, when I was your mother, was one of the happiest times of my life."

"You weren't my mother," said Starr, her head suddenly full of Walker's promises that Marty would be Hope's mother.

"Of course not. But when you used to call me Mommy Tea, I loved you every bit as much as if I had given birth to you. I still do."

"Where's Dani?" asked Starr abruptly. "Did she come with you?"

"She stayed with friends in Tahiti. We don't expect to be here very long this time, and we don't want to disrupt her life more than we have to."

_Just Sam's life,_ a tiny voice in the depths of Starr's mind protested. _Just Jack's life. Just Hope's life. Just my life._

Again.

Starr steadfastly turned the conversation to Dani's school in Tahiti and her surfing and how very helpful she'd been with Walker's rehab. She wasn't going to delve into memories of Mommy Tea right here, right now.

Eventually Jack and Walker knocked at the door with plans to go to Dave and Buster's. Tea hastened to join them.

"So that's the famous Tea," said Travis when he and Starr were alone in Starr's front room. "The one your mom threw out a window."

"Is that another one of my stories you didn't believe? Like the one about the man on a wheel?"

Travis shook his head emphatically. "No. I always knew that you were special enough that someone would throw someone else out a window over you."

Starr smiled. "Okay, then."

"And with all that, you and she love each other a lot." The smile slipped from Starr's face and she began to fidget with the sleeves of her blouse. "You always said that you had a great relationship," Travis prompted.

"Yeah," agreed Starr. "I said that. When Tea came back to town to make sure Walker got away with raping Cole's mom and planning to steal Hope and tell me she was dead, my friends couldn't believe that I had anything good to say about her. They looked at me like I must not have understood what she was doing to keep saying I loved her. She was a pariah for what she did, and I was the only one in all of Llanview saying 'oh, no, Tea's great once you get to know her.'"

"You don't feel that way anymore?"

"I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's having Dad back, or being so much closer to Mom these past few years, or having Hope and knowing exactly what I missed. What I missed with Hope, and what I missed with Mom when I was Hope's age. But I swear, Travis, watching her fuss over Hope and call her _Esperanza_ while she's planning on ripping Sam out of here when he finally has a stable family for practically the first time in his life..." Starr trailed off, then whirled around, eyes flashing fire. "I had this sudden urge to punch her in the face."

"It didn't show."

"What did you think of her? Really?"

"I assumed she must be an acquired taste," Travis offered tactfully.

"Which means you didn't like her."

"She made me uncomfortable. The way she called you into the room and cut your mom out. My mom isn't as involved as yours, but she's all I have. If anyone ever treated her like that in front of me, I'd want to hit them, too."

Starr considered that uneasily. "Mom and Tea are really good friends. Tea loves Mom," she tried.

"I don't think she does," said Travis.

* * *

When Jack had been packed off with Walker and Tea with the promise of two hours at Dave and Buster's and a prompt return home, Todd went in search of Blair.

He found her in the rocking chair in Sage's room, humming as Sage nursed. Blair looked downright peaceful. The image was perfect.

At least something was perfect.

Todd sank onto the settee beneath the window to watch and wonder whether Jack would have developed aplastic anemia if Todd hadn't stolen this from him. Breast feeding was supposed to give the baby all sorts of protection, but Todd had taken Jack to the airport to be, at best, bottle fed.

Blair smiled at Todd. Todd couldn't smile back.

She put Sage, gurgling and content, into her crib and sat on the settee beside Todd.

"We need to talk," she said unnecessarily. 


	5. Chapter 5

They both stared at Sage because that was easier than staring at each other.

"There's something I have to tell you," Blair said at last, after taking an inordinately long amount of time to readjust her clothes.

Todd's first thought was that she was going to tell him what she and Elijah Clark had done on Walker's hideous cow rug. His second thought was that it more than likely had something to do with the upcoming custody battle. His third thought was that he was glad that she was making confessions, because he didn't want to confess to almost having choked Walker or how afraid he was that he'd lost Jack again.

"Yeah?" he asked. It was the best he could do by way of encouragement. She deserved more, but he didn't have it.

"It's about Sam. I know how much you love him. You treat him like your own."

"He should've been mine."

"He should've been." It was the first time she'd ever said that. There was a tiny break in her voice and he watched her out of the corner of his eye, not quite able to summon the courage to turn his head. "When I told Walker to do anything—to do whatever it took to get home to Starr and Jack—to keep going when I couldn't because I thought the life we'd built was over—that was _our_ life. Those were _our_ kids. When I said that I would raise Sam because he was Starr and Jack's brother, when I decided I would love him as my own, that was because he was supposed to be _yours_."

"He's going to be ours in every way that matters," Todd assured. If Blair had come around to realizing what Todd had always told her—that her children, by definition, should have been his children, and that if he had it to do again he would never have told Paloma to get rid of Jack—then there was hope. Blair had come around. Jack would come around. Sam would stay where he belonged.

"That's a taller order than you think it is."

"Why? Because you didn't give birth to him? He's lived with you as long as he can remember. We have a stable family. We have Jack for Sam to bug, we have Hope for Sam to play with, we have a dog named after Sam's favorite baseball player and a pony named after a video game. We just won't tell the judge about the two-headed snake."

"It's not just that I didn't give birth to him. I never adopted him, either."

"What?" Todd was legitimately stunned. His theory that Blair was going to tell him about the off-kilter love life she'd shared with a homicidal lawyer was less far-fetched than this. He swiveled to stare at Blair, his earlier fear of looking directly at her chased away by shock. "How did that happen? Everyone thinks you're Sam's mother. Sam certainly thinks you're his mother!"

"I am his mother!" she snapped, southern and pissed.

"Sorry."

"You should be." She snatched a tissue from a box on the table to dry her eyes.

"How did it happen?" he repeated. "Why didn't the paperwork get done?"

"As soon as we got custody, Marcie McBain kidnapped Sam. It took us a lot of months to get him back. You can't adopt a kid you can't find."

"All right. But then you did find him."

"We found him with the help of a man named Ramsey who decided to blackmail Walker over some of the steps he took to get Sam." Blair rolled her eyes at the absurdity of it all. "It involved threatening Gigi and Shane Morasco, if you can believe that. They helped Marcie hide Sam from the authorities. Sometimes I wonder how I didn't understand right away why Jack was so angry with Shane and his family."

"So Ramsey is blackmailing Walker."

"Walker decided that the only way to keep us safe from Ramsey was to move to Hawaii. Starr decided that the only reason Walker could possibly want to move to Hawaii was to keep her away from Cole. You know teenage girls, their romance is the center of the universe and the biggest thing that ever happened to anyone in the history of the world. Next thing we know, Starr's pregnant and Walker is out of his damn mind. I threw him out because it wasn't safe for Starr. I couldn't stop him from taking Sam."

"But he brought Sam back later."

"No, he put Sam in a car without a car seat and was in an accident. Wouldn't take the driving course or the anger management course because he was so busy romancing Marty. It was me or foster care for Sam and the judge chose me. It didn't exactly put Walker in the frame of mind to let me make it official. Then the second Walker came out of that Marty trance, you know the one, Tea was right there. I couldn't risk reminding Walker that I had never adopted Sam. You know what Tea would have done. She would have adopted him herself instead, evened things up. 'Look, Todd, you have a son and a daughter with Blair and a son and a daughter with me! And I win because, really, I've been Starr's mother, too, ever since you gave her to me when she was a baby!'" Blair clenched her fists and bolted off the settee. "I should have pushed it through when we thought that bitch was dead, that's what I should have done. I guess I just felt this false sense of security when the only other alternative was out of the way. And Eli had just tried to kill me on our honeymoon. That got a little distracting."

"All right."

Blair rounded on him, still angry. "It hasn't been all right since you brought her into our lives and decided she was Starr's new, improved mommy."

"She was never Starr's mother. Starr always knew who her parents were. Unlike, say, Jack!" Two could play that game, and Todd was going to win. Starr adored Blair. Whatever Jack's feelings for Todd might be at any given second, they were never adoration. "He's out with your buddy Walker right now, calling him 'Dad' and complaining about how much he hates me."

"I didn't know! You knew who Tea was. You knew what you were doing when you handed my baby to her and told her to call her 'Mommy.'"

"I thought I was the one who had my head screwed with by electrical shocks for eight years."

Blair's hands went to her hips. "Your point?"

"If either of us is going to remember things that didn't happen, it's going to be me. I. Never. Told. Starr. That. Tea. Was. Her. Mother. Got it?"

"You just let Tea make that decision unilaterally, then? You stood by and watched?"

Todd groaned. "Blair, the one and only time I remember Starr calling Tea— calling Tea anything other than Tea, or, hell, Tee, Tea corrected her right away. Right away. She said that they were very special friends and that was it."

"That's not what she was saying when I pushed her out the window."

"This many years later, you do get that she was making things up to make you freak out and look bad, right? Weren't you just warning me not to let Walker do that to me again? Not that Walker needs to make things up. He tells me that he was the one teaching Jack to ride a bike, and that's true."

"Technically, it's not," said Blair. "Walker was on death row for that particular milestone."

Todd considered that and decided that it didn't actually make him feel any better.

"Jack barely knew who Walker was. When Walker got off death row, Jack rejected him. Even when things got smoothed over, Jack would always take my side, never left any doubt who his favorite was." Blair almost smiled. "I won't pretend I didn't enjoy it. It felt like payback for Starr."

"Until Starr got pregnant and they switched sides," Todd grumbled, angry all over again that he knew this as he knew a story that had been told to him rather than as someone who had lived it.

"That's how Jack tells it," Blair agreed. She evaluated Todd slowly, her eyes lighting with thought. "If Jack said that to you, you could take it as a good sign. It might be business as usual for him to complain about getting pushed for to the side for Starr, but if he's admitting to you that he only invented this tight relationship with Walker a few years before you came back—"

"He didn't. I only know that from eavesdropping on you."

Blair looked puzzled. "When?"

He remembered it vividly. "Last year. Right before you took him to the police station so he could confess to locking up Gigi Morasco."

"That," said Blair coolly, "was a private conversation."

"What did you want me to do? Walk out of your closet and have Jack call the cops on me instead of himself?"

"What were you doing in my closet in the first place?"

"Trying on your shoes," Todd muttered, because it was a stupid question and it deserved a stupid answer.

Blair laughed and ran her fingers down his face. "I bet you looked hot in them."

Her laugh and her touch were all it took to make the flare of anger start to dissipate. "None of them were my color."

She kissed his cheek. "There are a lot of black ones," she whispered in his ear. "You look good in black. And in white."

"It's after Labor Day."

"That rule is completely outdated. Besides, when did you and I ever follow rules?" She hugged him and kissed his cheek again. "I'm sorry, Todd."

"For not telling me about the white shoe thing?"

"For bringing up what happened with Tea back then. Losing Starr to her forever, that was my worst fear. But it didn't happen to me. It did happen to you. Jack's almost grown and you have to live with how much you missed every day."

"It sucks," Todd answered hoarsely into her hair. "But we aren't letting it happen again. Not with Sam."

"We may have to. They have leverage we don't have."

"We'll fight dirty."

"They'll fight dirtier."

"We have leverage they don't have."

"Like what?"

"Danielle."

"What about Dani?"

"We make a deal. Sam stays with his mother without interference from Walker, and Danielle stays with her mother without interference from me. Otherwise, we file a counter custody suit."

Blair shook her head. "No way, Todd. She's your daughter. You can't offer to trade her like a baseball card."

"Why the hell not? She doesn't want anything to do with me anyway. As long as she's happy with her situation, there's no reason for me to get in her way. She doesn't want me and she doesn't need me."

"Just because she was a little hesitant to try out her third new father in three years, that doesn't mean she wouldn't be hurt if you sent her this message that you don't want her. She's a good girl, Todd. She's been through enough. She doesn't deserve to be put in the middle of this and worried about where she's going to live for the next year. She doesn't deserve to have her father say she's not worth anything to her. You don't deserve it, either."

"I don't deserve to continue not seeing the kid I already don't see?"

"In a perfect world, you'd get to know each other because I think you'd like each other. But you love kids, Todd. You loved CJ and Sarah and Jessica. You loved our kids. You couldn't wait to get your hands on Hope and Sam, and I know that when you were staying with Viki, Ryder had you wrapped around his little finger."

"So? That's why I want Sam to stay with us."

"But it shouldn't involve you disowning Dani."

"I can't disown her. I never owned her. Ask her yourself."

"It will come back to hurt you if you give your own flesh and blood away that way. Someday it will send you into that self-loathing thing you like to do."

"Can you enjoy self-loathing? It seems like that would be a paradox. Like, if you loathe yourself you wouldn't want to let yourself do something you like to do like self-loathing."

Blair ignored him. "Victor Lord was the kind of man who could pick and choose which of his children he acknowledged. You aren't. It would bother you if Dani was out there knowing that you traded her for someone you liked better."

"It isn't like that. Dani would get what she wants."

"She already has what she wants. You'd be threatening to take that away from her." Blair shook her head firmly. "No. You're not doing that to Dani and you're not doing that to yourself. End of discussion."

She kissed him on the lips, and Todd agreed to table the matter for the time being.


	6. Chapter 6

The first communication they received from the judge's office went into great detail about how _family_ matters were best resolved by _families_ and with as little legal or outside interference as possible.

"Another bonus for Tea," Blair grumbled. "She's going to bleat about how she's representing herself because she knows how important it is not to bring any outsiders into a _family_ matter. Unlike us, who hired a shark."

"Did you choose yet?" Todd asked. They had narrowed the selection of attorneys down to three. All had exceptional records in custody cases. All had reputations as hired guns. Of course, so did Tea.

Blair tapped the letter thoughtfully against Todd's arm. "There's one more thing I want to try first. If the judge wants a lawyer who is family, the judge gets a lawyer who is family."

"You're not going to divorce me and marry a lawyer, are you?" Todd still hadn't quite gotten those images of Blair and Eli Clarke out of his head. "Because the last lawyer you married—"

"Was a God damned serial killer and still a better person than the last lawyer _you_ married," Blair returned hotly. "Eli could have beaten Tea," she mused.

"I'm pretty sure he can't beat her now that he's dead. So if that's who you were thinking of—"

"Of course not. You and I, we used to be alone, remember? We didn't have anyone."

Not comfortable with the sentimentality, Todd waved his hand to confirm that, yes, he remembered his life and what he knew of Blair's.

"Then we found these big, dysfunctional, screwed up families. They have to be good for something, right?"

"Not usually, in my experience," Todd mused. "Other than Viki." He tucked that thought away in his mind. He hadn't discussed the situation with Viki yet. It was past time that he did. Viki could fix almost anything.

"Well, this time, maybe we go through that messed up family tree until we find ourselves a lawyer."

"If there were any lawyers on my side of the family, they'd probably throw the case and call it a public service."

"So we'll look at my side."

"Please don't tell me Dorian got an internet law degree in the Senate."

"Not as far as I know. But she married a law degree once. Cassie's father. Herb Callison. He was supposed to be spectacular, right? Have you ever heard a bad thing about him?"

"I've never met him."

"Neither have I." Blair tapped him with the letter again. "I'm going to go feel out Cassie. If she thinks it's a good idea and she'll get him to do it for us, that's what we should do. If not, we'll get the guy you liked the best. Deal?"

It wasn't a bad idea. "Deal," Todd agreed. "You go talk to Cassie, and I'll go soften up Viki so she can start working on her testimony about how wonderful I am."

Blair didn't bother to hide the dubious look that crossed her face.

"My sister loves me!" Todd objected, even though Blair hadn't said otherwise.

"No one doubts that." Blair shoved the offending letter into her pocket. "Bring Sage along. Can't hurt to remind Viki that you named her daughter after her."

Todd almost smiled at the implied insult to his sister; Blair's bluntness amused and pleased him. "Want me to take Peanut too?"

"Nah. I'll take Hope. "We wouldn't want her distracting Viki from Sage Victoria."

* * *

Blair was never quite sure whether she should knock on the door of La Boulaie or walk straight in. It had been her home for so very long that she felt a certain possessiveness over it even though she and Todd had been careful to incorporate anything any of them liked into their new home. Still, the fact that all Cramers had squatters' rights here had rarely done her or her children any good. That had been most of the reason Todd had pushed for them to move out, after all.

She knocked.

"Blair!" Cassie beamed happily, and Blair smiled back. "You don't have to knock." Cassie knelt down to fuss over Hope. Although Hope had met Cassie before and been shown nothing but kindness, she cowered behind Blair's leg. Hope was rarely an easy conquest for anyone.

Piano music wafted into the foyer. "Are we interrupting something?" Blair asked. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was out of her element. She didn't go begging to her family, or to anyone else.

Cassie's smile grew wider, which Blair might not have thought possible. "Of course not! I'm sure River would love to see you."

That explained everything and then some. "River's here?"

"He has a job at a music school in Philadelphia. It's a wonderful place. They have a conservatory and programs for local children right in the same buildings. There are several instructors who are also with the Philadelphia Orchestra and you know that in music it's all about connections."

"I certainly hope he makes better connections than Starr did during her singing phase."

"Maybe I should hang a picture of Rick Powers over the piano as a reminder. 'Danger! Do not approach.'"

"River's staying here?" Blair asked as they moved in the general direction of the music.

"He was talking about renting a place in Philadelphia so he could walk to work, but now I think he'll stay. This is such an artistic place all of a sudden." Cassie laughed. "Adriana is always drawing and designing and throwing different scraps of fabric everywhere. Langston walks around with her laptop because she's in the middle of writing six different things. River and his pianos fit right in."

"That's wonderful," said Blair. It was wonderful. La Boulaie was meant to be full of Cramers. She raised her voice. "Hi, River!"

The music broke off with an atonal chord that River managed to turn into a flourish.

As the hugs and greetings and catching up lengthened, Hope ventured away from Blair's side and made a beeline for the piano.

"Don't touch that, Hope," Blair warned. "It doesn't belong to you."

"It belongs to me," River confirmed. Before Hope could react, River had picked her up and settled her into his lap on the bench. He took Hope's hands in his and helped her pick out the notes to _Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star_. "That's your mommy's song, right?" he asked her.

"Again!" commanded Hope. River acquiesced.

Blair shook her head at Cassie. "I see River has the magic touch. Hope doesn't take to strangers like that. Not ever." She rolled her eyes. "Except Todd, of course, but he's a special situation."

"Always," Cassie agreed. She watched River and Hope fondly for a moment longer. "So what brings you here? I know it wasn't River, because I didn't tell you he was coming."

"And why is that?" asked Blair, temporarily insulted.

"Because I knew you had so many things going on with your son. I didn't want to be so happy about having mine back."

"I always want you to be happy, Cassie."

"I want you to be happy. Sam is your son. Like River is my son."

Cassie had given Blair as good an opening as any. "Like Herb Callison is your father?"

Cassie looked puzzled for a moment. "I was older when he adopted me, but, yes. Of course."

"He's mostly retired, isn't he? But he still takes a few cases?"

"You want him to represent you?"

It felt like an accusation even though she knew it wasn't. "You don't think he'd do it?"

"I'm sure he would. He knows how much Mother and I love you. I just expected you and Todd to go for someone a little… flashier."

Blair withdrew the crumpled letter from her pocket. "We were going to. But I think we need substance more than we need style. We need to show that we're a family."

They looked together at River and Hope.

"So you're going with the truth," Cassie concluded. "I'm proud of you, Blair."

* * *

It took a solid fifteen minutes for Viki to stop cooing over Sage. Todd didn't blame her; Sage was, after all, stunning. Her eyes looked greener and her hair looked redder by the day.

"So to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Viki asked at last.

"Can't Sage Victoria want to see the woman she was named after?" Todd asked. Viki liked it when people laid things on too thick. She found it entertaining. So did Todd, sometimes. It was one of the things they had in common.

"This is going to be good." Viki tickled Sage. "What do you think, Sweetheart? Should I turn around and run now?"

"You'd leave an innocent baby here with me?"

"She's your daughter! Where else should she be other than with her father?"

"So you think I'm a good father?"

"You know I do, Todd. I'm so delighted that you've had one more chance to have a little girl."

"Great!" Todd jumped up and kissed Viki on the cheek; Sage squealed with laughter. "That means you'll testify for us at the hearing, right?"

Viki became much too serious much too fast. "The matter over Sam?"

"What other matter is there?"

"Todd, you are Sage's father, and Starr's, and Jack's, and Dani's. Walker is Sam's father."

"And Blair is his mother and Blair is my wife and I'm your brother."

"But, Todd. You must understand that I'm caught in the middle. Walker is my brother, too."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Was there a second microchip other than the one Mitch Laurence had his people torture me over for eight years? Because that microchip said that Walker Laurence was _not_ your brother. He's Mitch's brother."

"But for eight years—"

"For eight years he stole my life and you loved him because you thought he was me. Now you know he wasn't me, and you don't have to love him, and you can be on my side a little, Viki!"

"I may have thought he was you, but that does not make the experiences that Walker and I shared as brother and sister any less real."

"What experiences? The experience where he let Jessica lock Natalie in the basement and try to blow her up?"

"Are we going to make a chart and compare things he did to things you did?"

"We shouldn't have to. All that should matter is that I'm your brother and you like me better than you like him!"

"Not touching that with a ten foot pole," said Viki.

"I know you do. I saw you the day they did the DNA tests. You were ready to start dancing around the room when you saw that I was me. You took me home with you when he told you not to. You knew who I was."

Viki took Todd's face in her hands. He was about to wrench away from her touch, but something stopped him. Even when Viki was throwing the hated we-can't-blame-him-for-stealing-your-life-so-you-g et-over-it speech at him, something about her held him still. "I love you, and I missed you so very much. More than I can ever tell you."

"Then do this for me," he mumbled through the sister-hypnosis.

"I can't. I have to be neutral in this. I can't support my brother taking away my other brother's son."

"Didn't you support Kevin taking away Joey's wife?"

"This is most definitely not about Kevin. But if it were about Kevin, Kelly was an adult—"

"When did that happen?"

"And capable of determining where and with whom she belonged. Sam is a child, and Walker nearly died finding him."

"And then ignored him for the next five years."

"That's an overstatement and you know it."

"How would I know that? I wasn't here. I was being beaten and tortured while Walker lived it up pretending to be me and stealing my family, including you."

"No one could ever steal you from me."

"Whatever," muttered Todd. He took Sage and he left. 


	7. Chapter 7

Todd didn't quite know how he got from Viki's kitchy overstuffed living room to Sage's nursery. He got Sage ready for the night almost mechanically, for once virtually immune to Sage's usual energetic chirping.

When Sage was tucked into her crib, happily watching the multicolored stars that her nightlight sent roaming around the nursery walls, Todd made his usual evening round of the house.

Hope had been put to bed and was sleeping peacefully; at almost four years old, Hope slept more than Sage slept at three months. Starr had been helping Travis with a project at his job at the Franklin Institute and would not be home that night. Jack and Sam were, regrettably, spending the night with Walker and Tea. At least Walker couldn't kidnap Sam while Jack was there. Jack might want to leave Todd, but he would never leave his horse or his soccer team or pretty little Jamie Vega who looked worshipfully at Jack when the soccer games were over and she didn't think anyone was watching her.

Todd texted goodnight to the three older children. Starr replied instantly with _Good night, I love you. _The boys didn't respond. He hadn't expected them to.

Todd heard the water running in the master bedroom and knew that Blair was taking a shower. The thought filled him with jealousy rather than desire. Eli Clarke had crossed his mind repeatedly ever since Walker had stood in the house Todd and Blair had built together and told his funny stories.

_Should I tell you about the time I come into my own living room to find out she's got her psycho lawyer spread out on my rug? I should send you the cleaning bill for that. Anyway, she's standing over him wearing this dominatrix thing while she's got his hands tied... You and your, blah, blah, blah, forever a rapist, can't do anything but missionary with the lights off once every five years because the fun stuff makes you think of Marty, you'd never go for anything that kinky. Blair has to be bored out of her skull._

Today it was worse than ever.

Todd checked the locks on the front door and the back door and the side door and the private door that led to Starr's apartment.

Viki might tell him she missed him and mean it, but she held him on equal footing with the man who had stolen his life and nearly destroyed his family.

_You're both my brothers. What he allowed to be done to you doesn't matter at'all._

He had always trusted her above all others. He had known- she had admitted it- that she had tended to put him above her own children. Now he had found the person she wouldn't push aside for him, and that person was a cheap imitation of him.

He went from window to window to see that they were locked. He jumped hard when he saw a face staring back at him.  
_  
"Not so funny now that the shoe's on the other foot, is it?"_ asked Kevin. _"Mom has a thing for people she thinks are broken. So of course she's going to love her long-lost brother who raped a girl in her son's room and got her son arrested for it. But now she's got someone even more messed up than you. And she'll pick him over you just like she picked you over me. Every time."_

"Get out of my house," Todd growled.  
_  
"I'm not in your house. I'm in your head," _said Kevin unhelpfully. Still, he vanished; only Todd's own reflection was left in the window. He checked to see that it was secure and locked.

When he finished checking the windows, Todd moved on to the alarm system. It was turned on and functioning correctly.

Then, because he couldn't remember if he'd done it already, he checked the locks on the doors. As he crossed the house he thought about Viki and Kevin and Walker.

_No one's going to give you any free passes because you were locked up and tied up and beaten._

She'll pick him over you.

Blair has to be bored out of her skull.

He squared his shoulders as he checked the alarm system a second time in case he'd missed something the first time. He would keep his family safe. No one would give him a break, but he didn't need a break. He had lost everything once and he wouldn't let history repeat itself.

He checked on Hope and Sage a final time. Hope hadn't moved an inch; Sage, too, was asleep.

He locked the bedroom door just as he heard the shower shut off. Blair was singing softly; he couldn't make out the words, but the sound of her voice alone was enough to remind Todd what he was fighting for. He didn't have much time, which was good; he wouldn't have to keep up his nerve for long.

He removed his belt and threw it on the bed, carefully averting his eyes as it landed with a soft plop. The rest of his clothes went in a pile on the floor to be dealt with the next day.

He turned down the bed and spread himself across the middle of it, clutching the belt in one hand, and just in time, because Blair emerged from the bathroom, naked as Todd himself. She looked at him appreciatively; he could have sworn he he saw her nipples tighten. Knowing that she wanted him reminded him of how much he always wanted her even when he couldn't express it.

"Hello there," Blair said, and how two ordinary words could have dripped with so much sex was a mystery for the ages.

"Catch," said Todd, and he threw her the belt.

Blair caught it reflexively and looked at it. She made no move to do anything with it.

"Tie my hands," Todd instructed, and he thought he was perfectly clear, but Blair threw the belt onto a chair and sat, cross-legged on the corner of their bed.

"What's going on?" she asked quietly. Concerned instead of sultry. Wasting her nakedness on what, if Todd wasn't careful, was going to turn into a Very Serious Conversation.

"I know you know what's going on," he told her irritably. "You did this kind of thing all the time with your psycho killer lawyer."

"What the hell gave you that idea?"

"I don't hear a denial in that."

"Yes. We did. A few times." Todd's heart sank. He hadn't realized that a part of him had held out hope that Walker had been lying. Or that perhaps it had been the only the one time, staged to annoy Walker.

"If you did it more than once, it's something you like. Right?"

"Wrong." Blair crawled across the bed and tucked her body against his. "It was something I wanted with that man at that moment."

"_That_ man? I'm better than he is, Blair!" He raised his voice, willing it to be true.

"Yeah, you are! You are the love of my life and I am not playing bondage games with you knowing what you've been through! That day in Florida when you ran out of Irene's little funhouse..." she shivered uncomfortably against him. "I was so scared for you. So scared of losing you again. I wanted to kill the people who did that to you."

"You did."

Her face hardened. "That's right. I did. I enjoyed it, too." She grabbed one of his hands in both of hers and ran her fingers over the faint scars left by the electrified shackles he had worn on and off for eight years. "The idea of someone tying you up like that is about the last thing that turns me on."

"You were turned on when you came in here."

She squeezed his hand more tightly. "I was turned on because I saw the man I have loved for most of my life lying on our bed all naked and hot. You gave me the belt and I was afraid you were having some kind of weird flashback. But that's probably the only way I would ever do that kind of thing with you. If you thought it would help you work through something that happened to you there."

"Are you bored?" He asked, and his ears started to ring with terror now that he'd come out and asked it. "Are there fantasies that you have and you don't think I'd be able to make them happen? I don't get a free pass because I was tortured for eight years, right? Everyone has made that clear."

Blair kissed him so deeply that he hoped she'd decided to forget about the conversation and go back to what he'd originally intended, belt or no. He groaned when she pulled away and crushed his hands into the small of her back, bringing her closer to him.

"The only fantasy I have," he heard Blair say as he was trying to get his lips to her neck, "is making love to you in every room of this house."

"Can be arranged," he said. Her body was soft and sweet and slightly damp from her shower. He wanted to touch all of it. When he knew she was ready, he guided her on top of him to give himself the best possible view of his woman, who knew when to talk and when to take action.

* * *

"Would it ruin the mood if I asked how things went with Cassie?" Todd asked when they'd been drained and spent and lying in each other's arms for some time. He did not want to disrupt the sated softness, but he was also curious. Blair had seemed quite content when he'd come in.

"She said he'd do it." It was such a small thing, but Todd loved being able to feel Blair's voice as well as hear it when they were so close together. It was the kind of thing he would never take for granted again. "She said she'd ask him, but she seemed pretty certain that if she asked, it would happen."

"So that's good. That's why you were in a good mood when I came home."

"I'm always in a good mood. I'm married to the man of my dreams." She kissed his collarbone.

"Cassie didn't mind?" Todd asked awkwardly.

"She was happy to do it. Oh," she added, as if remembering something she'd meant to tell him. "River was there. It was the weirdest thing."

"To be expected," Todd murmured. "Any kid that got stuck with Andrew Carpenter as a father was going to turn out weird."

"Todd!"

"You know I'm right."

"_River_ wasn't weird. River was very sweet. What was weird was how fast Hope took to him and his piano. She wants lessons."

"Do they even give lessons to kids that young?" Todd shrugged it off. "Never mind, we'll find someone who will. What Peanut wants, Peanut gets."

"River said he can do it. The thing is, with a child that young you need a parent to know the same things the child is learning so it seems natural to the child. They learn it like they learn everything else. Starr's musical enough that she should be able to handle it." Blair laughed. "Or Hope's grandfather could always help out."

"If she needs it." Todd shifted uncomfortably. He'd had piano lessons as a child, and of course Blair and Starr sang, but he knew that that wasn't where Hope had come by her inherent love for the piano.

"What?" prompted Blair.

"You know piano is a Marty thing. That's where she gets it."

A threatening look came into Blair's eyes, as he'd known it would.

"I'll buy the piano tomorrow. I'll take her to the lessons. I'll sit with Hope in _Marty_'s childhood home where _Marty_ learned to play the piano if I have to, and I won't ever think about how _Marty_ would feel if she knew that was happening. See? No one's losing anything because of what I did to Marty. No need to throw me out of the car and leaving me in the middle of nowhere."

"Good," said Blair. "No more trips to Ireland. Not even if the trip to Ireland is a trip you don't take to your granddaughter's piano lesson."

"I want to be what you want," Todd said, not for the first time that night.

"You are," said Blair, and not for the first time.


	8. Chapter 8

Everything was scheduled to happen all at once on Halloween. On top of the usual things, like trick or treating for the younger children and the dance at the high school for Jack, and on top of it being Todd and Blair's anniversary, Viki insisted on throwing a party.

"I'm throwing a party _because_ it's your anniversary," Viki told Todd. "I wasn't able to celebrate with you they day you were married. I want to do this for you."

"If you wanted to do something for me, you would _not_ throw this party," Todd pointed out.

"You'll like it when you get there," Viki said, as if Todd were a naughty little boy who would not eat his lima beans.

"You're going to invite Walker and Tea, aren't you?"

Viki rolled her eyes. "Walker is my brother and Tea is my very dear friend."

"So you're throwing this party for you, not for me," Todd surmised.

"If I only invited the people you liked, Todd, it would be a very small party."

"I don't see a problem with that."

Viki ignored him. "Perhaps if you see Walker and Tea in a less contentious situation, you will be able to take steps toward realizing that you all love Sam and can reach an amicable agreement."

"The last time Blair had to be around Tea in a social situation after Tea tried to take one of her kids, Tea went out a window."

"Well, you've all matured since then, haven't you?" concluded Viki, and that was that.

As a result, then, on the morning of the first anniversary of the day he'd married Blair for the last time, Todd brought Blair chocolate chip pancakes in bed, accompanied by a single gold balloon with the expectation that the rest of their day would be less than private and romantic.

Blair put herself and Sage in the same matching witches costumes she had used when Starr was a baby, not that either she or Todd needed one more reminder of how completely they had come full circle.

Starr herself had decided to be the whole solar system with Travis as dark matter. Todd didn't quite get the joke, but it made his science geek and her equally geeky boyfriend happy.

Hope was supposed to be some sort of drum majorette- she had been fond of playing at being in a parade since a day spent watching television the previous Thanksgiving- but in Todd's opinion, she looked more like a bellhop at the more expensive sort of hotel.

And just when Todd thought he couldn't love Sam any more, Sam dressed as a slice of pizza.

The way Jack was behaving lately, Todd would have picked a Jekyll and Hyde costume for him. Instead, Jack and his soccer teammates all had plans to be zombies at the school dance, and because Jack happened to be in one of his pleasant moods he offered to share the pile of zombie gear and makeup he had collected with Todd.

Todd didn't mind being a zombie. He knew all about being dead, but not.

When trick or treating was complete and Jack was sent off to the dance with assurances that their phones were on and he needed to call the minute he suspected trouble, the rest of them made their way to Viki's.

Todd's suspicion that it was going to be a long night was confirmed when they were greeted not by Viki or Jessica or even Natalie, but David Vickers, dressed in a skintight costume that Todd did not inspect too closely.

"Blair! You look awful!"

"It's a costume!" Sam explained helpfully.

David scowled. "I don't like it when food talks to me. Has to do with that time I spent in a Moroccan prison."

"You want to go back there?" Todd asked, but David ignored him. Todd took the opportunity to usher the younger children upstairs to the room that Viki had set aside for their party within a party.

As they approached the top of the stairs, Todd got ready to dodge Bree's usual flying leap in Sam's direction, but the room was unexpectedly calm and peaceful. All of the children were seated in a circle and the baby-sitter encouraged them in a low voice. "Sierra Rose, pet the puppy gently. See how nicely Liam pets the puppy? Good job, Liam."

Hope and Sam scampered over to join the others, excited as if they didn't have a dog of their own at home. And even though Jose had the misfortune to be a poodle (what else could they have expected from Dorian?), he was enormous and getting bigger every day, and therefore far superior to the rat-sized accessory that was currently enchanting the party's under-ten set.

Todd took a harder look.

He knew that dog.

A chill ran down his spine.

He braced himself, and not for nothing, because before he could settle Sage in and let her presence be known to the baby sitters, he heard Tina's voice.

"Is Princess David Vickers behaving herself?"

"We're all having a wonderful time," the baby-sitter answered. "She's the life of the party."

"She always is," said Tina. "And since it is her mommy and daddy's anniversary party—"

"Is it really?" asked Todd. Tina jumped, nearly losing the crown that she had perched on top of her head. It was gratifying.

She shimmied herself together. "It's Cord's and my anniversary as much as it's yours and Blair's," she said firmly. "I'm sure Viki would have made it for both of us if she'd known we were coming. And you showed up late! Someone had to be the guest of honor."

Todd would have been all for handing the party over to anyone but Tina. He was suddenly motivated to run back down the stairs and follow Viki around, the idolizing baby brother reveling in the party she'd thrown him.

"This is Sage," he said to the baby-sitter.

Tina gasped, then grinned as she looked at the baby. "She has red hair," said Tina, as if that were some kind of personal triumph. "Hi, Sweetheart," she cooed. Sage giggled.

"Yes, Aunt Tina is funny in a tragic way," Todd told Sage. "But remember, it isn't nice to laugh at the mentally ill to their faces."

Tina lifted Sage into her arms; Sage clambered along eagerly, always pleased to get a better view of whatever happened to be going on.

"I think you look like me," said Tina. "I really do. Now, when I was your age—well, older than you—I didn't know who I looked like because my father wouldn't acknowledge me. When I was grown and getting married to your Uncle Cord, I had to ask Viki for permission to come into this very room to show Cord a portrait so Cord would know what Father looked like."

"Is there any special reason you're telling my daughter this?" Todd asked, cringing at the memory of the portrait. Tina was right; it _had_ lived in this room until Viki had conjured up the good sense to get rid of it.

"Just thinking about it, since now Viki is throwing anniversary parties for you and not for me, even though it's the same day. I asked Viki about it five times—"

"Only five?"

"And she kept saying that she got to come to my wedding but not yours, and that she couldn't have known Cord and I would decide to come here at the last minute, and that would make sense, but I know when she's lying. I'm her sister! Like I wouldn't know." Tina huffed. "I'm going to go ask her some more. She can't keep lying with all of those people down there."

For a second, Todd thought of letting her go. Viki deserved to suffer for not taking sides in the custody battle, after all. Then he sighed. He couldn't subject anyone, let alone Viki, to Tina. "She's doing it because she feels guilty."

Tina cocked her head thoughtfully. "Why? Because she thought Walker was you? That was over a year ago."

Todd scowled. He hated it when people—even flakes like Tina whose opinions didn't matter anyway—acted like he ought to be over it by now, as if the imposter wasn't still messing up his life. "No. Because she won't pick sides in the custody battle." He lowered his voice and jerked his head in Sam's direction. "Blair's his mother, Walker's his father, and Viki says Walker and I are both her brothers so she can't have an opinion."

"Walker's not really our brother!" Tina protested.

"Try telling that to Viki."

"She's such a soft touch."

"But not about keeping a little boy with the only family he really knows instead of with some guy who let Jessica lock Natalie in a basement and try to blow her up."

Tina suddenly looked sick.

"That's right," Todd remembered. "You were all up in that mess too."

"I was protecting Sarah!" Tina snapped. "Remember my daughter Sarah? Used to think you hung the moon when she was that size?" Tina pointed at the assembled children.

Todd muttered his assent that he would not have wanted anything to happen to Sarah.

"It wasn't like what Walker did. Walker just wanted to keep that poor woman locked up in his house, and he didn't care about anything else. Of course, Viki forgave him right away but banished me for years." Tina's mouth hardened. "Why don't I testify for you?"

"What?"

"I'm your sister, too. I might not be the pillar of the community that Viki is, but I can talk about how much CJ and Sarah loved you and how if Walker loses everything, it's because it serves him right."

"You know that if you're testifying for me, you're really testifying for Blair," Todd pointed out.

Tina hesitated.

"But that will score you points with Cord, you being so noble and generous and everything."

Tina nodded.

This party was far more productive than Todd had envisioned it being.

* * *

"How could you do this to me, Blair?" David demanded.

Blair sighed. "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but do what?"

"I know you've never approved of my relationship with Dorian. You tried to push her on Ray Montez on our wedding day _after we offered to share it with you_."

"That sounds like something I would have done," Blair admitted boredly. She didn't care to remember the wedding day in question, ending as it had with the revelation that Eli Clarke planned to murder her.

"And when that didn't work, you waited... and you waited... and you waited some more... and just when you thought I'd let my guard down, you called in your replacement of choice."

"Ray Montez is here?" asked Blair.

"Don't be cute. Cassie's daddy. Herb Callison."

"He's here?" It might not have been her first choice to meet the man while wearing a witch's costume, but perhaps it would be better to have everything out in the open from the first. If this was a bad idea, they had to know it sooner rather than later so they could hire one of the slick sharks they'd auditioned instead.

"As if you don't know."

Blair grabbed David by the arm and pulled him into the darkest, most isolated corner.

"No way, Blair," said David. "You might have had a chance years ago- maybe, if I was really drunk- but I'm a happily married man."

Blair didn't bother to retort. This was an argument she'd won so many years ago she could barely count them. A Marilyn Monroe costume, a camera, a blindfold, and then a limousine ride and a private jet...

She shook off the memory and refocused herself.

"What happened? When did he get here?"

David pouted. "What do you mean, what happened? All of a sudden I'm not Dorian's only date to your stupid anniversary party, just like you planned."

"So he just showed up today? There wasn't any warning?"

David twisted in thought. "I think she mentioned that he was coming a few days ago, but I was having a bad hair day and I was distracted. Then he was waiting for us when we got to La Boulaie, and ever since Dorian has been hanging on his arm and babbling about how they have to go see River perform every day this week and how wonderful he is for helping you."

"She wants him to help me?" Blair knew that Dorian would never want Sam to be sent to Tahiti, but she also knew that Dorian was less than enamored of anything that drew Blair and Todd more tightly together.

"She thinks he's a prince among men." David sneered. "_Prince_. Senile old King Methuselah, more like. He could be my father, except older and less heroic."

Blair rolled her eyes. "Thank you, David." She extricated herself from the dark corner and made a beeline toward the echo of Dorian's laugh. Dorian certainly sounded happy.

For once, David hadn't been lying. Dorian actually did have her arm linked through her ex-husband's. They were both listening to Cassie as she told a story, amidst a steady stream of interruptions as longtime Llanview residents bid Herb hello.

He was still a very well-regarded, fondly remembered, popular man.

Good.

That worked for Blair's purposes.

Cassie pounced on Blair as soon as their eyes met and made the introductions.

"I can't tell you how much Cassie and I adore Blair," Dorian gushed. "What that man is trying to do to Sam is reprehensible. He barely knows the child. This has nothing to do with Sam and everything to do with Walker being jealous that he isn't Todd."

In a day filled with surprises, this was the biggest one yet. "You almost sounded sympathetic to Todd," Blair told Dorian.

"There are not very many people in this world to whom Todd Manning is superior, but Walker Laurence happens to be one of them."

"Who are the others?" Blair wondered aloud.

"Don't push your luck, darling."

Herb smiled warmly at Blair. "She never thought anyone was good enough for Cassie, either."

"That's because no one is," said Dorian.

"That's true." Herb caressed Cassie's shoulder and Cassie beamed at him worshipfully.

For the first time in a very long time, Blair wished that she had a father. But no father at all was better than the man who had taken advantage of Addie (Addie's occasional attempts at whitewashing aside). And Sam was certainly better off in Llanview with Todd treating him as his own than he would be banished to Tahiti. There was a task at hand and she was going to complete it.

"Speaking of Todd," she said, and Herb returned his attention to her, "how much did Dorian tell you about why she hates him?"

"Hardly anything," protested Dorian.

"You talked about him for three hours straight," said Cassie.

"As I said, hardly anything," repeated Dorian. "If he's going to represent you properly, he does have to know everything in Todd's background that's going to be used against you at the hearing."

"That's why I was asking." She looked Herb in the face, trying with everything in her to size him up. "I love my husband. He's a wonderful father and he treats Sam like his own. But the bad stuff in his past is really, really bad. It's so bad that he's had an attorney decide she'd rather be disbarred than represent him in the middle of a trial."

"That is not something you or Dorian needed to tell me, Blair. That trial is still used as a teaching case in law schools about what happens when ethics and morals diverge."

"Do you have a problem representing him?"

"No. Not under these circumstances. Not in a custody hearing."

"Do you have a problem representing me?"

"Why would he have a problem representing you?" asked Dorian. "You're his daughter's cousin and Cassie loves you."

"I'm pretty sure that the last time he lived here I was trying to ruin your life."

"Which is ancient history!"

Blair looked again at Herb.

"No," he confirmed. "I would not have agreed to represent you if I did not think I could do it properly or if I thought it would place any stress on Dorian's or Cassie's family."

"See?" asked Dorian. "Can we stop with the silly questions?"

"This is my son's life we're talking about, and I will ask as many questions as I want to ask," said Blair.

"I see the family resemblance," said Herb, and no one retorted because Viki breezed over to greet Herb.

"Is this normal?" Blair whispered in Cassie's ear.

"Is what normal?" Cassie whispered back.

"The way Dorian is with your father. She's very possessive of him."

Cassie laughed. "Of course she's possessive of him! They were married for a long time. They have a daughter. They have a grandson."

"David thinks I brought Herb here to break up his marriage."

Cassie laughed harder. Blair waited. "They loved each other. They liked each other. That was never the problem. They just couldn't live with each other. They know that."

A wave of sadness hit Blair with Cassie's answer. So often she had thought she had known that about herself and Todd.

She even felt a bit relieved when David reappeared, prodding Adriana with a plastic sword he had stolen from someone's costume, and demanding that Adriana recount to her mother that David had been like a father to her in her teenage years. Herb was drawn away, and Dorian drifted closer to Adriana and David, as much a family unit with them as she had been with Herb and Cassie.

In Blair's wildest fantasies, she couldn't fathom moving between Todd and Jack and Walker and Sam that way.

David might not really have a fight on his hands, but Blair had one on hers. 


	9. Chapter 9

It was with a reasonable amount of confidence that Todd and Blair walked into the conference room to which Judge Daniels had summoned them.

_"He's unusual,"_ Herb had informed them when they had received the notice of the pre-hearing conference._ "He prides himself on his ability to facilitate deals before the hearing starts. It shouldn't be possible for him to come with time in his schedule for meetings like this, and it's not even his job, but he does it. The thing to remember is that under that friendly demeanor, he's just as aware as anyone else if you're wasting his time. So I only want to let this meeting last as long as it takes him to realize that this is not a situation that can be worked out informally."_

With that ringing in her ears, Blair didn't worry too much when Tea engaged Judge Daniels in a collegial, gossipy conversation about who had done what to whom and why at the last Bar Association dinner.

"Watch," Herb mouthed so that only Todd and Blair could see. "Now."

As if he had been commanded, Judge Daniels snapped upright and redirected the conversation. "I believe that family affairs should be settled within the family," he said, to no one's surprise.

"I agree," said Tea obsequiously. "That's why we did not bring in outside counsel."

Judge Daniels nodded. "Not every parent who comes into court has the benefit of also happening to be an attorney of your caliber." Before Tea could bask in the compliment, Judge Daniels whirled on Herb. "Do you have a personal stake in this as well, counselor?"

"I was married to Blair's aunt for a very long time," Herb told him.

"That's right, that's what I thought. Back when you were the one in politics instead of Senator Lord."

Herb nodded.

"Tell me why the minor child—Sam—tell me why Sam can't divide his time between his parents the way he has for most of his life. Blair and Walker were divorced when Sam was a baby. He doesn't even remember them being together, does he?"

"No, I don't believe he does," Herb agreed. "As for why he can't divide his time between his mother and his father, my client does not object to that while the boy's father remains in the area. As a matter of fact, as soon as Walker and Tea returned to Llanview, both Sam and his older brother Jack began spending time with them with my client's full cooperation and blessing. What my client is not willing to do is relinquish all custodial rights and see her son taken thousands of miles away from everything he knows. The situation does not lend itself to shared physical custody."

"Is that agreed?" Judge Daniels asked Tea. "It is absolutely necessary for you to move to Tahiti and it is absolutely necessary for Sam to accompany you, negating any possibility of shared physical custody?"

"It's not necessary for us to _move_ to Tahiti," Tea said smoothly. "We already live in Tahiti. That is where my daughter has lived for all but two years of her life. That is where she is in school. I can't uproot her any more than Todd and Blair can uproot their children to come to Tahiti and make it easier to share custody of Sam. And as for Sam accompanying us—"

"He's my kid. Mine," Walker broke in. "Kids move where their parents tell them to move all the time. This should not be any different."

"That's true, Your Honor," said Tea. "While Blair Cramer Manning has acted as Sam's mother—"

"I am his mother," Blair injected, because she was not going to let that statement go unchallenged, ever, regardless of legal strategy.

"Not in the eyes of the law," said Tea. "Really, Judge Daniels, don't let us waste your time. My daughter can testify and Blair's daughter can testify and our extended families and friends can testify. I can fling mud at Todd and Blair, and believe me there is a lot to fling. Blair can have her attorney fling mud at Walker. The only thing that is going to matter is that Walker is Sam's legal parent and Blair is not."

"If we're making opening statements, Judge Daniels, I intend to urge the Court to consider that the child's security and well-being trump biological ties and even legal technicalities," said Herb mildly.

Judge Daniels looked at the five of them in turn. "This is not something that will be resolved without a hearing for all the marbles, is it?" He stood up without waiting for an answer. "Hearing is on the docket for December 27. See if you can use the holidays to come up with an alternate solution."

With that, he left.

Herb gave Todd and Blair a final note of warning. "There's nothing you can do about the past, but do not give them any fresh material. Until this hearing is over, you're all model citizens."

Todd and Blair met each other's eyes. They knew from experience that that was easier said than done.

* * *

Blair was determined not to let the upcoming custody hearing cast a shadow on the winter holidays. It would be their first Christmas with Sage, after all. Naturally, the schedule included a Saturday visit to Santa Claus.

"There is no reason we have to go to the mall," Todd told her. "Malls are for normal people."

"I don't think this will make anyone think you're normal," Blair assured as she snapped Sage into a bright green dress. Sage smiled winningly, ready for her close-up with Santa. It was so cute that it was basically sickening.

"That's true," Todd agreed. "But what I mean is, we're rich. We can shut down Logan's whole toy department and let the kids buy whatever they want, like we did when Starr was a baby. I've been meaning to do that since I got back, anyway."

"Visiting Santa Claus at the mall is a childhood rite of passage, and our children are doing it this year."

"Sam's not going to be impressed. Sam's seen Santa Claus in his own home."

"Sam wants to make sure Santa knows that he's moved."

"Sam can send a certified letter to the North Pole. And Sage might look cute now, but she's going to be terrified if you drop her on some stranger's lap and tell her to smile."

"Is something bothering you? Do you really not want to go?" Blair asked.

Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to Todd to consider whether or not he wanted to go. He objected to big, showy see-and-be-seen events on principle. Blair either insisted, in which case they went, or she didn't, in which case they stayed home and almost certainly had a lot more fun.

Blair took his hesitance for confirmation. "I'll call Cassie and see if she can come. I don't want to ask Jack or Starr to cancel their plans."

"Don't be stupid," said Todd roughly. He had missed enough milestones with Jack and Starr. He wasn't going to miss any with the younger children- even if the milestones in question had been made up by an ad agency.

Blair rolled her eyes. "Same goes." She put Sage in his arms and went off to see that Sam and Hope had put on their coats and hats as requested.

* * *

Lately Sam was more interested in reindeer than Santa. He'd seen Santa more than once, but he'd never gotten a glimpse of the reindeer. Mom and Jack had been teaching him to ride a horse, and while Sam enjoyed it, he knew that it would be even better if Tetris were able to fly.

While they waited in line to get their picture taken with Santa, Hope pointed at the life-sized reindeer suspended far above their heads. "Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen," Sam narrated. "Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen. And Rudolph."

"Not Rudolph," Hope protested. "His nose isn't red."

"You just can't see it because it isn't nighttime," Sam explained. Sometimes Hope didn't understand anything because she was so young. Going to see Santa- or really one of Santa's helpers, because no way could Santa himself be in every mall- was fun, but it would have been better with Bree or maybe one of the other kids from their class.

Hope crossed her arms and pouted because Sam was smarter than she was. But it only lasted a minute. She pointed high above them again. "We should ride one."

Sometimes, though, Hope was okay. Sam had been thinking the same thing.

They didn't get to talk about it more, though, because it was their turn to sit on Santa's lap and since Sam was the oldest he had to hold Sage, which was always hard because Sage liked to wiggle around. Hope was better at staying still- that was why she always won at hide and seek.

Sam was so busy keeping Sage from crawling off that he barely remembered to remind Santa (really Santa's helper) that they had a new address and that they could never have enough games for their Z-Box, especially ones that Sam and Jack could play together. Sam did forget to ask for toys for their puppy, Jose, and their pony, Tetris, but Hope remembered so she was back in Sam's good graces until they took the escalator upstairs and Hope got on the higher step and said she was taller than Sam. The only thing Sam could do was get on an even higher step, and when he bumped into someone Mom told him that if he didn't stand still they weren't going to go to Ruby's Diner for lunch. Hope stuck out her tongue, but Hope never got in trouble because she was the quiet one.

They went up to the second floor to look at the top of the Christmas tree behind Santa (really Santa's helper) and the other decorations. The reindeer were now at eye level, just a few feet from them behind a railing, soaring over the crowds waiting to see Santa below.

Mom took Sage off to change her diaper before lunch, and Uncle Todd showed Sam and Hope the model train that ran around a shop window.

"Tetris!" said Hope, as a train car carrying a model horse that did look like Tetris rolled by.

"Tetris' evil twin," said Uncle Todd. "He tried to take over Tetris' life back at the camp after Tetris came to live with us. He pretended to be Tetris, and he tricked all the other horses into thinking he was Tetris, so they listened to him when he said they should all stop being horses and start being cows. But one day a very smart little boy and little girl saw all the horses mooing and they realized what had happened. So they shrank Tetris' evil twin down to size and put him on a train to go off somewhere where he couldn't hurt anyone."

There was always something weirdly familiar about the stories Uncle Todd told.

"Your turn, Sam," said Uncle Todd. "Tell me about the people ice skating on the train." He pointed at the next car.

Sam tried to make his story as good as Uncle Todd's, but he was starting to get hungry and he didn't really like ice skating, so he just said something about how the people were having a contest to see who got to sit in the best seat at Ruby's Diner. It didn't take long to notice that Uncle Todd wasn't listening at all.

Sam stopped talking.

The reindeer were right there.

Sam reached over his head to grab the railing and started to climb over.

"Grandpa!" called Hope, the snitch. The problem with kids who weren't Bree was that they were always trying to tattle to adults on Sam.

Sam jumped down and clapped his hand over Hope's mouth. Hope didn't try to bite, like most kids would; instead, she glared at Sam with mutinous eyes.

"You be quiet and you can come too," he said.

She nodded and he pulled back his hand.

Hope was a lot shorter than Sam, so there was no chance that she could climb over the railing. Sam had to get down on his hands and knees and let Hope step on his back so she could get high enough to go over and balance on the narrow ledge. Then Sam started to climb over himself, looking forward to the moment that everyone in the mall realized that he and Hope could fly, riding reindeer like superheroes.

* * *

The fear had been building ever since Todd had told Blair that there was no real reason he didn't want to go to the mall, other than the obvious explanation that he was rich and he didn't have to. Maybe it had been building since before then and Blair had noticed before he did; something had made her ask, after all.

His muscles were tense, but he couldn't relax them. If someone was following them- and it would be all but impossible to pick out a threat in the vibrating materialistic crowd- he wasn't going to be able to move quickly enough.

He tried to listen to Sam as Sam talked about the toy train. Sam, after Todd's own heart as usual, really just wanted to go to lunch. Todd begged whatever power might be involved to let them get a booth at the far end of the restaurant so he'd be able to keep his back against the wall and see the whole place. Out here, the threat could come from anywhere. Anyone could come from any direction. Trying to see everything was making his mind as tired as his body.

Todd saw Sam start to climb over the rail, and some part of him thought that that was good. There were no people on the other side of the rail, so no one would be able to hurt Sam. Todd made eye contact with Sam, or thought he did; the world was foggy around him and he had to keep reminding himself to pay attention. Sam climbed down. That was right; Sam and Hope could fall forty feet if they climbed over the rail. That was why the rail was there. That was why Sam and Hope would not climb over the rail.  
_  
"Get back here!" _Todd shouted before his brain caught up with his mouth. He grabbed Sam, who was halfway over the rail, by his shoulder and deposited him on the floor at his feet. With his other hand, Todd reached over the rail to pick up Hope, who suddenly realized what a dangerous thing she'd done and burst into tears.

The cacophony around them stopped as all the shoppers gawked at Todd and Sam and Hope, collapsed together on the floor.

"Are they all right?" asked the ones who mistakenly thought they were being helpful. "Is there someone you can call? There's a first aid station downstairs- do you want me to walk with you?"

Todd ignored the talkers. It was the silent gawkers who held his interest. One of them was taking pictures with his phone.

Todd knew him. He had worked for The Sun when Walker had stolen it and had chosen to leave not long after Todd took it back.

It hadn't been in Todd's imagination, then. They'd been followed.

The photographer took off, and in his stunned state there was nothing Todd could do about it. Even if he had been able to move, he couldn't trust Sam and Hope to stay still and wait for Blair. That was obvious.

He forced himself to his feet and picked up Hope, who buried her face in his shoulder. Sam, he grabbed by the hand.

"Is she all right?" someone asked for the thousandth time. "You might have hurt her arm when you pulled her back over the railing."

"Fuck off," Todd told the woman politely.

He and Sam and Hope hadn't gotten too far toward the garage when Blair and Sage caught up to them.

Blair had been gone for less than ten minutes, and Todd had almost lost Sam twice over- once by letting him fall to his death and once by letting Victor's goon take the photographs that would no doubt be entered into evidence if he let the custody case go to a formal hearing.

He tensed his muscles to try to stop the shaking; holding Hope was becoming almost impossible. "Can you put Hope in the stroller with Sage, please?" he asked, detached and polite and barely able to speak.

Blair shot him a concerned look, but directed her attention to Hope. "Come on, Beautiful. You're going to sit down here and relax with your Aunt Sage, and once we get to Ruby's you'll feel better."

"We aren't going to Ruby's," Todd informed Blair. "Sam is being punished."

"_What_?" Sam shouted with outrage. "You're not my dad! You can't punish me! And Hope did it too!"

"Oh, that was _Hope's_ idea, was it?" Todd demanded. His voice had returned. "Hope decided to climb over the rail? Hope isn't big enough to reach the top of the rail."

"We were going to ride the reindeer," Hope sobbed.

"Well, reindeer can't fly and neither can you!"

That was the last straw for Sam. "Reindeer can fly! Santa's reindeer can fly!"

In that second, from somewhere deep within Todd, Peter Manning prepared to emerge and tell Sam and Hope exactly what Santa and his reindeer were.

That Blair sensed it and stopped it before it happened was nothing short of a miracle. "Santa's reindeer can fly, but those are not real reindeer and you know better than to do what you did. Your uncle's right. You're being punished."

Todd had never seen Sam throw a full blown tantrum in the year and a half that they'd known each other.

Suffice it to say, it was not a pretty sight.

And it didn't take Sam more than two minutes to hit on the perfect argument: _I'm going to go live with Dad._

Blair handled the whole thing with stoic experience, but Todd saw her flinch every time Sam's refrain circled around.

Todd wasn't going to be the reason Blair's fears came true. It was time to put his emergency plan in action, and step one was a little conversation with his old partner in crime, Starr.

* * *

Todd found Starr sitting in her front room with an anatomy textbook on the table and a cup of coffee in her hand.

The way his kids loved to study would never not be weird.

"Hi, Dad," Starr said, sensing his presence without looking up from her book. "Thanks again for taking Hope to the mall today. I think Travis and I will be able to get her to see Santa at the end of this week, but knowing she didn't miss it if we can't takes so much off my mind. Whoever decided that final exams and getting ready for Christmas should be at the same time needs their head examined."

Todd closed the door that shut Starr's apartment off from the rest of the house. "I need to talk you."

Starr straightened up and closed her book without even marking her place. "This sounds serious."

Todd sat down across from her.

"Danielle. She's coming here for Christmas, isn't she?"

"Yeah. She'll be here tomorrow morning."

"I need you to arrange a meeting for me."

Starr burst out laughing. "'Arrange a meeting?'" she mocked. "Dad, we're not in the mob. She's your daughter. Call her if you want to talk to her."

"I can't do that. If I call her, she'll feel like she has to tell Tea and Walker and I don't want to put her in that position- don't ask why!"

Starr shut her mouth.

"She can tell them after the fact if she wants to. Just give her the choice of keeping it private."

"Am I allowed to talk now?"

"Go ahead."

Starr heaved an enormous sigh. "Fine. Dani and I are having dinner tomorrow night. Before dessert, I will ask her if she wants to see you. If she says she does, I will tell you where to meet us. I am not springing you on her for a top-secret meeting without giving her a choice. Do we have a deal?"

"Deal," Todd agreed, making a mental note to activate the tracking device on Starr's phone just in case his invitation got lost in the mail.


	10. Chapter 10

As it happened, no underhanded spying on Starr was needed. She called Todd promptly at six o'clock with the suggestion that Todd meet her and Danielle at a burger joint on the edge of Llanview University's campus. He bought hot chocolate for both girls and sent Starr on her way while nudging Danielle in the general direction of the Christmas tree lot.

It had been over a year since he'd seen Danielle. She was an inch or so taller and her eyes reflected newly won wisdom and experience.

Or perhaps that was Todd's wishful thinking. He had never gotten to know Danielle. Blair knew her better than he did, and Blair was so deeply convinced that this was a terrible idea…

Danielle looked at him expectantly.

What Blair didn't understand was how much nothing there was between him and Danielle. Or rather, there was something. There was a shared knowledge that they were never going to have the relationship that he had with Starr or that she'd had with Ross or even Walker—and the shared knowledge that they were both fine with that.

"You're still surfing?" Todd asked awkwardly, because Danielle's love of surfing was virtually the only thing he had ever learned about her as an individual.

"Yes," said Danielle politely, in the manner in which children spoke indulgently to adults who knew nothing about them and asked stupid questions as a result. Her eyes flashed briefly, the way Tea's often did. "Did you ask Starr to set up a super-secret meeting to ask me about surfing?"

"You're right," Todd agreed, and in a bittersweet moment he was newly aware of how much he could grow to like this girl. "Let's cut to the chase."

"I think that's best."

He almost laughed. "Last time we checked in, you had all the father figures you needed in Ross and Walker. You still all set in that department?"

"I'm not saying I never want to get to know you at all. I have your DNA. It's kind of weird."

"But if I were to petition for custody of you, you wouldn't like that very much, would you?"

She threw the hot chocolate he'd bought her into the snow. _"You can't do that!"_ she objected loudly enough that heads turned toward them. _"It's my senior year! I live in Tahiti and you live here!"_

"You just wasted perfectly good hot chocolate, because I don't have any intention of getting custody of you if that's not what you want."

"Oh." She looked slightly abashed. "Then it's not what I want."

"If that's not something you want, there's really no need to have me legally listed as your father, is there? If you wanted to come ask me whether I can roll my tongue and if I'll buy you a new surfboard, you could still do that. But since I wouldn't legally be your father, Walker could adopt you. I think that would mean a lot to both of you."

Her face lit at the thought. "Really?"

"I'd like to offer that to Walker, yes."

"You'd like to offer that to Walker…" she sounded it out in her mouth… "in exchange for Sam."

"You got your mother's brains and your mother's good looks."

She waved off the compliment. "It's not my first custody battle."

"Blair didn't want me to suggest it to you. She thought you would take it as me not wanting you. But I thought you would want to hear all of your options."

"So if I ask you not to trade me to Walker and not to file for custody of me…?"

"That's what will happen," he said, not at all sure whether he meant it. He liked the kid. He didn't want to hurt the kid. She was _his_ kid, whether he'd planned for her or not.

But no one was going to take another little boy away from Blair.

Danielle's mouth twisted in thought. She nodded her head firmly. "Okay."

"Okay?" he asked, not daring to hope.

"Make the deal. It's all right with me. I want that with Walker. And I love Sam, and I know Sam doesn't want to get pulled out of his life any more than I ever wanted to be pulled out of mine."

"Thank you, Danielle." His voice was softer than he'd expected it to be. He brushed a dark curl out of her face. "I'm sorry we haven't gotten to know each other better."

She shrugged. "We still could."

"We could," he echoed.

The carried on walking toward the Christmas trees. "How does this work?" she asked after a long moment. "Are you going to call Mom tonight? You could just come home with me and she could draw up the papers right away…"

"I'd like to talk to Walker first. Father to father, if that's all right with you."

"Want me to call him right now? He can meet us here."

Todd gestured that she should go ahead.

Walker arrived in no time flat with a swagger in his step and a smirk on his face. The smirk fell away when Danielle flung her arms around him, beaming like the setting sun. "Please listen to him. Please do this," she said.

Walker softened more than Todd would have thought possible. He wasn't going to deny Danielle anything.

"Give us a minute, Dani," Todd reminded. Her head shot up; it was the first time Todd had called her by her nickname. Something about it had always felt wrong in his mouth, like he was pretending an intimacy that didn't exist. Now that he was being honest... Now that he was being honest, it hurt to let her go.

She fairly skipped back to the concession stand, presumably planning to replace her hot chocolate.

Walker's smirk returned. "It took you a whole day," he said as he circled Todd. He extracted a set of photographs from inside his coat and handed them to Todd.

They were even worse than Todd had feared that they would be. Sam boosting Hope over the railing. Hope balancing on a two inch ledge above a forty foot drop. Sam climbing up himself, and getting most of the way over. All the while, Todd's gaze was vacant.

"There's video, too," said Walker delightedly. "Looks even better. The judge is going to love it."

"The judge isn't going to see it."

"I've already put it on YouTube," said Walker. "Half of Llanview already has. You'll be lucky if you don't lose your other kids along with Sam. "

Todd felt the blood drain from his face. Walker laughed loudly.

"Just kidding," said Walker. "But you know how things go viral in this day and age. A lot's changed since 2003, you know."

"For one thing, I have a daughter named Dani."

"She's never going to be your daughter."

Todd stepped closer to Walker. "Wouldn't you like to say that and have it be true?"

Walker's eyes narrowed. "I'm listening."

"Drop the custody suit for Sam. Renounce your parental rights and let Blair adopt him. I renounce my parental rights to Dani and you adopt her." He pointed in the direction Dani had gone. "She liked the idea so much. You don't want to disappoint her, do you?"

"I'm not giving up my rights to Sam. Dani's going to understand that."

The problem was, Dani _would_ understand that. But it had been worth a shot. You didn't start bargaining from your final position, after all. "All right, Walker. I'm a reasonable man."

Walker snorted. "I've lived inside your head, remember?"

"Give Blair custody and let her adopt Sam. Final offer."

Walker stared into the distance after Dani. "Deal. If Tea agrees, it's a deal."

"I always found Tea very agreeable when I wanted something," Todd challenged. "You don't think she'll want you to be the baby-daddy?"  
_  
"Dani! Time to go! I'll drop you at Destiny's!" _Walker barked. He spared one more glance at Todd. "Tea will do the paperwork tonight. Merry Christmas."

* * *

Walker had suspected that Tea might be reluctant to give up a fight she thought she could win or that she might be suspicious of Todd's motives.

He had not expected her to cackle with glee and rub her hands together in delight.

Tea's killer instinct turned him on. Most things about Tea did.

"Todd Manning, running scared. I love it. Love it!" Tea kissed Walker hard on the lips.

(One thing about Tea that did not turn him on was the fascination Todd still held for her. Laughing at Todd's fear was one thing. Completely overlooking what the bargain meant for Walker and Dani was another.)

"And the idea of me getting to be Dani's father for real, getting to adopt her. You love that, too, right?" Walker prompted.

Tea laughed until she cried and sat down hard on the couch with her head buried in her hands. "It all worked out. This many years, and it all worked out."

Walker sat beside her. "I really don't understand what you're saying. You'll let me adopt Dani, right?"

Her eyes glittered as she lifted her head. "Of course you can adopt Dani. You're her father in every way that matters already."

"So we can withdraw the custody suit tomorrow. Sam doesn't want to come to Tahiti anyway. And who needs to be around when the Margaret Cochran starts coming out of him, right? Maybe he was going to shove Hope off that ledge."

Tea rolled her wet eyes. "You're bad."

"You love it."

"I love you. I'm not going to let you give up your son." She smirked. "And as an attorney, I'm not going to give up a case I can win."

"We do win if Todd gives up Dani."

Victory rolled off of Tea in waves. "We don't need Todd to give up Dani. Dani isn't Todd's to give up. Todd Manning does not get to play the hero. Not after the way he came in here and blew up our life."

Excitement stirred in Walker's stomach. "Are you sure? About Dani?"

"I fixed the test myself. I wanted you so much."

"Ross really was her father, then?"

"How many people do you think there were on that island?" She shook her head. "Never mind. Tell Todd that there's been a filing glitch because of the holidays so we'll have to delay in implementing his little plan until after Christmas. We'll give Todd and Blair a nice, big surprise for New Year's." 


	11. Chapter 11

The last thing Todd wanted to do was agree to let Jack and Sam spend part of Christmas with Walker and Tea. He and Blair had gotten the boys for Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning, and there was no reason to interrupt that streak by handing them over for Christmas afternoon and night.

But since it couldn't be helped, it didn't take him long to find the silver lining in having the house free of children. Well, mostly free.

"Maybe you should take Peanut over there, too," he suggested to Starr. "He was your father for a long time."

Starr looked at Todd as if he had grown three heads. "He could have killed both me and Hope when he threw me down those stairs. He would've been fine with me thinking Hope was dead so he could play happy family with Marty. There were so many times he would've killed Cole and it wouldn't have mattered what that did to Hope or me."

"You forgave him for all that."

"No," said Starr firmly. "I forgave you. He's not you, so I don't have to forgive him. I'm especially not going to forgive him knowing what he's trying to do to Sam. It would be different if he and Sam had always been close or something, but that's not how it was. He was happy to dump Sam on Mom when he was busy trying to steal Hope instead."

"Okay," Todd agreed. "If that's really how you feel."

"Why did you even suggest it?"

"I'm a generous guy. I believe in sharing."

Starr laughed. "No, you don't."

"When I married your mother the first time and found out that I had an inheritance, the first thing I did was put her name on the checks right next to mine."

A romantic look passed over her face. "Well, that's Mom. That's not the guy who lived your life for eight years."

"She used to buy me beer when I couldn't afford even the two dollar stuff. And that Christmas, when I was alone..." He stopped, not planning to tell Starr any more but confident that she would put the pieces together.

"So you want a romantic evening with Mom with the kids out of the way?" Starr giggled again. "Fine. Hope and I have plans in our apartment all night and we won't come out until tomorrow morning."

Now that she was saying it out loud, it was weirder than he'd thought it would be.

"Want us to take Sage, too?" Starr offered, thoroughly amused.

"No! You know what, forget about it. Let's eat leftovers and watch Christmas horror movies like we did last year."

Starr's grin widened. "No, Hope and I have very private plans. We need to call Travis in New York. We might want to talk to him for hours and hours and hours and _hours_."

"Stop it, Shorty."

"Why are you so embarassed? You had me spying on Mom and Max and telling you about her ovulation cycle when I was six."

Todd grimaced. "You remember that?"

Starr nodded in a broadly self-satisfied way.

"You didn't know what you were saying."

"You told me ovulation was a chocolate drink."  
_  
Maybe if I hadn't, you wouldn't be twenty and raising a four-year-old_, Todd managed not to say. He wouldn't have traded Hope for the world, but part of him still irrationally wished that Starr could have had the exact same child ten or twenty years later. He had so wanted Starr to be free to be a child before taking on that kind of responsibility or experiencing the kind of pain she'd felt when she'd thought she'd lost Hope.

"Have you ever had real Ovaltine?" Starr continued. "It's disgusting. But that box of chocolate covered strawberries, that would be good for a romantic-"

"I don't need any help."

"Don't make me come in there and pop any air mattresses," said Starr. She flounced theatrically into her apartment and slammed the door, then threw the bolt hard enough to make the walls shake.

* * *

Blair draped herself over a chair, iPad in hand, and looked idly at some of the Christmas photographs that had materialized on MyFace. She tried not to allow herself to wonder if she had just spent her last Christmas with Sam. The house, while not empty, was too quiet without Sam and Jack. They should have been shouting at the new gaming computer late into the night, and she wouldn't have made Sam go to bed, not until he passed out from sheer exhaustion and Todd had to carry him upstairs.

She felt Todd's footsteps behind her, and then his lips on her neck. He removed the iPad from her hand and deposited on top of the nearby bookcase.

"Hi," she said, already dizzy from the kiss.

He didn't answer. Instead, he grabbed her by both hands and pulled her to her feet. Before she could catch her breath, his body was crushed against hers, hard and hot and demanding. "Come with me," he ordered.

She couldn't have disobeyed if she'd wanted to.

He led her through the kitchen, stopping to push her up against the refrigerator and kiss her, hard, again.

"Did you know," he asked, "the Christmas is a time for presents?"

"I'd heard that," she murmured.

"Would you like to hear about the best Christmas present I ever got?"

"Superbowl tickets? A puppy? Or was that a birthday present? I forget the answers to this quiz," she managed as he divested her of her shirt and threw it into the sink.

He admired the spider-web delicate black lace bra she had put on to mark this particular anniversary. The lace tore as he ran his mouth over it and her desire multiplied.

"If you forget, I'll just have to show you." He growled in her ear. "You won't forget this."

"The kids..." she muttered before she lost the ability to think completely.

"No one's coming in here," Todd assured, and she decided that that was good enough, because he already had her hands positioned on the bathroom sink.

Deja vu shot through her. They'd done this before- started to- when the house had been half-built and she'd been pregnant with Sage. Then, the sink had been the only option to brace herself against. She recalled regretting at the time that the sink hadn't yet had a mirror. Now it did, and she caught a glimpse of herself as Todd lifted her skirt.

When Todd was with her like this, her body was without fault. Her belly, after a middle-aged pregnancy, had not a single line that should not be there. Todd, too, was perfect. She watched his face as his fingers caressed her, teasing her, testing her.

The delicate lace panties, like the delicate lace bra before them, ripped as they fell to the floor.

He caught her eye in the mirror and she looked a challenge at him. Now.

He unzipped his pants and stepped out of them.

She gasped when he entered her and saw her own eyes widen with delight in the mirror.

Then she didn't see anything because there was only feeling until her body somehow slumped sideways with hot white semen dripping down her legs.

She kissed the line of his jaw when she felt ready to move. "That was amazing."

He didn't say anything, but led her back into the living room and spread her out beneath the Christmas tree. The tree was the only source of light in the dark room. "I've always wanted to be like this with you," he told her as he lay down beside her. "Ever since that night. Under a real tree in a real house where there's heat and food and the best of everything. That's where you belong."

"I belong with you."

He danced his fingers over her bare stomach, playing in the greens and blues and reds that flashed there. "That too. Especially that."

"You make a fantastic Christmas present." Her fingers found a discarded length of ribbon and she grinned wickedly. "Where should I tie this?"

Todd tugged his shirt tails down to cover his penis. "You don't need a chastity belt for me, Babe. I'm all yours."

She settled for tying it around his thigh, the pretty gold bow not entirely out of place on his hard, lean leg. "You know the story of the crusader?" she asked. "She went off to war and she put her husband in a chastity belt so she knew he'd wait for her. She was afraid that she might be killed, so she left the key with her very best friend. But an hour after she started out toward the battle, her friend came galloping up behind her on the fastest horse in town, yelling 'you left the wrong key, you left the wrong key!'"

Todd rolled his eyes. "The women went off to war and left the men behind?"

She leaned over to kiss him. "No one could stand the idea of them getting hurt."

He kissed her back, but stayed silent. She felt a flash of defensiveness, and wondered why she'd told that stupid old joke, even with the genders changed. "I know it bothered you, hearing about the men I was with while you were gone. It would never happen while I was with you. It never has."

"I know that." He tugged her closer and kissed her again. "You said your only fantasy was to do the dirty deed with me in every room in the house."

"I don't think I phrased it that way."

"Jumping my bones, getting it on, knocking boots, cleaning the carpet, belly riding, winding the clock, bumping uglies, batter dipping the corn dog-"

"Todd!"

"I like that one."

"You would." She brushed his hair out of his eyes. "No. I make love to you. Always. It couldn't be anything else because that's how I love you."

"I love you. But this isn't the present I wanted to give you."

She raised an eyebrow. She doubted that very much.

He laughed. "All right, not the only present I wanted to give you. I know what you were doing when I came in. You were thinking about losing Sam."

She swallowed hard. The lovemaking had left her feeling pleasantly exposed, and it was harder to put her fears away when she was lying half-naked next to Todd. "I try not to dwell on it. I didn't want it to take away from anyone's fun today, especially Sam's."

Todd cuddled closer to her and kissed her on her forehead. "I know that. But I don't want you to have to worry. I thought we could have this wrapped up by now, that I could hand you custody papers and adoption papers and we'd be all set."

That sounded like more than generic wishful thinking. "What did you do?"

"I know you didn't like the idea, but she's my daughter. I talked to her and it was what she wanted."

"Dani?" Blair groaned. "Todd, you didn't offer to trade Dani, did you? Your daughter for my son? That's the one thing I couldn't-"

"Dani was fine with it," Todd repeated. "She wanted it. I asked her and she thought it was a great idea. And my back was kind of against the wall." Blair felt her brow wrinkle. Todd put his finger on her forehead to smooth the wrinkles away. "No point in getting all mad that I didn't tell you. I'm telling you now, and nothing happened, so it didn't blow up in anyone's face. That's what you're always saying, isn't it? That you don't care if I do stupid things, as long as I tell you?"

She smoothed her rumpled skirt nervously. "What happened?"

"The day we took the kids to the mall to see Santa, I felt like I was having a PTSD thing."

She tried to sit up, furious that he had been in pain and hadn't told her. He splayed his arm heavily across her to keep her where she was.

"Not a big deal, not a big enough deal to change our plans. But there were threats everywhere. Someone was following us and they were going to hurt you or the kids. I felt it."

"But there wasn't really anyone there?" she asked, hoping that that at least was true.

"Turns out, this one time I wasn't crazy. It's not paranoia if they are out to get you. Walker sent a photographer after us waiting for something to happen. He got pictures of Sam and Hope trying to ride the reindeer, and me not stopping them because I was trying to get my head out of some top secret prison in Louisiana."

"But you did stop them. They're fine. People have lapses, it only takes a second-"

Todd shook his head. "The pictures look really bad. The one thing Herb told us to do was be model citizens for a month and I couldn't manage it. Walker- no one person should be allowed to be that smug, you know? Save some for the rest of the world or something. But when Dani started begging for him to take the deal, that was it. It's our best chance at keeping Sam, but I think Walker's backing out. He was ready to take it when I offered it, he and Dani both wanted to draw up the papers that night, and now he's putting it off, saying there's some reason it can't be done until later."

"Did you give him a deadline? Say the deal isn't good if he waits too long?" asked Blair, suddenly more interested in why Walker was lying than the fact that she didn't approve of swapping one child for another to begin with.

"Thought it would be better to let him think he's got me."

"Maybe," Blair mused. "But Dani..."

"Dani will be fine no matter how this shakes out. Sam- I've been Sam, Blair. I've been the kid whose piece of shit father took me away from the mother who loved me even though we didn't have the same DNA. Sure, Walker's doing it out of spite and not for a trust fund, but we're not losing Sam. We're not. If push comes to shove, we take all the kids and run."

Blair didn't bother pretending that the thought had never crossed her mind. "We can put up a Christmas tree wherever we go."

"We can finally live on the beach. You know I've always wanted to be a beach bum. You pack all your little bikinis, okay?"

"And you don't pack any of your shirts." She tucked her hand beneath his collar and began unbuttoning his shirt from the inside out. Todd telling her the truth was an aphrodisiac, she found. "Don't know why I'm lying here topless and you aren't."

"Don't know why you still have that skirt on." She lifted her hips so Todd could slide the skirt off.

"If we're running away next month, we don't have much time to get through all the rooms in this house," Blair pointed out. "And by the way, just pushing me up against the refrigerator for a little kissing doesn't count for the kitchen. I want you on the counter like I had you on the bar at Capricorn." She kissed him long and deep. "Or maybe on the floor," she mused when she broke away to draw breath. This time, she ran her lips over his ears. "Or we could stick with up against the fridge. Better go with all three, actually."

"Whatever my woman wants." Todd was rocking against her, bumping his erection against her stomach but making no real move to penetrate. "But first, it's going to be right here. Right under the tree." The colored lights flickered around them, making her feel like they themselves were color and fire and light. She grasped his cock and slid it over the silky moisture between her legs, needing to be one with him, feeling the whole of their lives together in that one movement. In an instant she was knocking at the door of his rundown motel room; sitting at a bar; crying on a park bench; sledding down a snowy hill; striding into a party on his arm; dancing beneath the golden balloons; kissing him through the bars of a prison cell; laughing and hiding their handcuffed wrists beneath a blanket; staring as he emerged from the shadows at a movie premiere; holding his hand as they walked through the waters of Key West; standing in the woods that would become their dream home; falling into his body again.


	12. Chapter 12

"I don't like the idea of bringing up your willingness to trade Danielle for Sam to the judge at all," said Herb when Todd and Blair updated him on the situation. "I don't think he'll be impressed by the idea that you suggested trading a child like a baseball card."

"You didn't see Dani's face light up," said Todd. "It was exactly what she wanted. She certainly didn't think she was being treated like a baseball card."

"The judge won't have seen her face either," Herb pointed out. "Todd, I'm not criticizing you. I understand that this is a uniquely complicated situation, and what you proposed would have benefitted all the children involved. It was a generous gesture. Really. But the idea is going to have an inherent distaste for someone who has not been intimately involved with the particular complications of your family. Reading about it in the papers isn't the same as living it."

"Can't deny that," agreed Todd. "Only about half of what I print in my paper is true."

"You're all the way up to half?" teased Blair, glad to see the mood lightening.

"Well, almost." He trailed his fingers along her arm, and something deep inside Blair thrilled. There had been a time when Todd would not have been able to make even this chaste display of physical affection in public. Worse, there had been the long, lost eight years.

"The thing that bothers me," Blair told Herb to get her mind back on the subject at hand, "is the way Walker and Dani were ready to take the deal and then they stalled. They obviously changed their minds. If they wanted to do it, it could have been done by now."

"I agree. It could have," Herb confirmed. "You're right, Blair, something changed."

"Walker went to see Tea and she changed his mind," Blair proposed. "She told him something that made him want to give up the idea of adopting Dani. There's nothing he wants more than that. He adores that girl, dotes on her." An unpleasant remembrance of the way her own children had been brushed aside as soon as Walker had met Dani washed over her. "He wouldn't give up the chance to adopt her for anything."

"Then it stands to reason that he doesn't think he gave it up."

"He can't adopt Dani if I don't give up my rights. If that was how it worked, Blair and I would just ninja-adopt Sam."

Blair had a sudden vision of throwing Sam an adoption party where everyone dressed as ninjas. The idea had merit.

"The obvious question- and I'm sorry, but I have to ask this- is whether you really are Dani's father. Are you absolutely sure?"

"Of course he is," said Blair. "There was a DNA test."

Todd shrugged noncommittally. "DNA tests can be faked. A DNA test had this whole town believing that Walker Laurence was me, and then that he was my twin brother."

"Tea didn't have access to the kind of technology Mitch used," Blair pointed out. A flutter of nasty, vindictive hope was growing inside of her and she did her best to squash it.

"She had access to the samples. She had access to the lab. Who knows what she had access to? Tea usually gets what she wants by whatever means necessary." He shook his head at Blair. "Aren't you the one who's usually accusing me of underestimating Tea?"

"This just sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to me," Blair said weakly.

"I wouldn't wish away Dani. She's a good kid."

"You don't like the idea of having children by different women. You never have, not since you found out about Victor Lord having children by his daughter's best friend."

"That's not why-" Todd snapped, and then went sullenly silent mid-sentence.

Herb intervened. "I'm going to ask you three questions very quickly, and then this part of the conversation will be over. All right?"

"No," said Todd.

Herb ignored him. "Did you have unprotected sex with Tea Delgado about nine months before Dani was born?"

"Yes," said Todd, and Blair summoned the willpower not to clap her hands over her ears like a child. She knew where babies came from. She did not need to hear this.

"Did someone else have unprotected sex with Tea Delgado about nine months before Dani was born?"

"I didn't stand there and watch or anything," said Todd.

"What makes you think that the other man was the father rather than you despite the DNA test?"

Todd shook his head. "Some things you don't tell even your attorney. Next topic."

Blair was amazed that Herb had even gotten that far.

After the meeting, when she and Todd were alone, Blair asked herself over and over again whether she wanted to know.

She didn't, she decided over and over again. Todd's sex life when they weren't together was Todd's business. She was jealous that he'd been with someone else, but she had been with other men. She was jealous that someone else had had his child, but she had carried Patrick's son until he'd been ready to face the world on his own, and Walker's son far too briefly...

But she had Walker's other son to think about. If Tea had been lying about Dani's paternity all these years, that might be the leverage Blair needed to keep Sam. There could be nothing worse than losing Sam. Sam was more than worth the risk of the horrible things she would have to imagine and then somehow bleach out of her brain.

"Todd?"

"Yeah?"

"The question you wouldn't answer for Herb."

He laughed wryly. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to ask."

"I wouldn't ask at all if there wasn't some chance it could help Sam."

"When we were in Key West last year, I watched Dani walk on the beach. She walks like Ross."

Blair couldn't help feeling disappointed. "That's it? Todd, Sam talks so much like I do that it's scary. It doesn't make him my blood."

"It was one time with Tea," Todd continued.

Blair took that argument even less seriously. "Let me introduce you to our children. Jack in particular. You've never exactly had fertility issues. Kelly used to bitch that all you have to do is look at me and I get pregnant."

"I'm pretty sure I have to do more than that," said Todd.

"So you did that with Tea? And please give me as few details as possible."

"I did more than look at her. I did less than I did when we ended up with Jack." He smirked slightly. "Or Starr. Or Sage."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"The way your loving ex Walker put it when he was telling me how much you enjoyed having sex with him was that I didn't get my rocks off with Tea."

"I didn't enjoy sex with Walker. It sucked," Blair lied dutifully. It seemed only fair to say, under the circumstances, when she was giddy with an unexpected ego-boosting victory._ He didn't want her the way he wanted me. Always. _"But if you never- if you're saying not at all-"

"Sort of." Todd made an obscene gesture that left Blair burying her face in her hands to choke off her laughter. "Things started off mediocre and they went downhill from there."

"But you aren't sure. You're saying it's technically possible."

"Didn't they tell you in fifth grade health class that sperm can get into pre-ejaculatory fluid?"  
_  
Pre-ejaculatory fluid?!_ They'd managed to get into a conversation so ridiculous that Todd had left behind his usual euphemisms and obscenities and resorted to a biology textbook. She jumped up to hug him, hard, to soften the blow of her laughter. "They sent the girls to a different class. Yours sounds more useful."

He grumbled something incoherent into her hair and hugged her back. "I came back here and you were all so damn sure she was mine. I had other priorities and it's technically possible, so whatever. But if she's mine, it was something a lot less likely than what happened with Jack."

"Okay," Blair agreed. "We'll get a sample from Dani. We'll get our own DNA test so we know what we're working with here."

"Good."

"But, Todd?"

"What?"

"Tea didn't even notice?"

He sighed heavily. "Blair, you know Delgado notices exactly what she wants to notice."

* * *

Todd felt dirty when he watched her do it, right in the privacy of their own home.

Dani arrived to spend the afternoon with Starr, and Blair enveloped her in a gushing, affectionate hug amidst much praise and stroking of hair. When Dani had disappeared up the back stairs to Starr's apartment, Blair held up her hand to reveal a dark, curling strand of hair.

Things had changed since Todd had been shut into Victor Lord's crypt a decade before. There was such a thing as mail-in DNA testing. Drop two samples into an envelope under a fake name and off they went to a lab where no one knew or cared about the Lord-Mannings of Llanview. It wouldn't be admissible in court, but it would give them the truth.

Expelled from college under a cloud of both crimes and academic failure though he had been, Todd still knew better than most that knowledge was power.

"I want you to open it," Todd told Blair when nondescript envelope returned, rush delivery, your-signature-here, four days later.

"She's your daughter," Blair pointed out as she took the envelope but made no move to open it.

"Probably not," said Todd, more to prepare himself than Blair. Blair was going to be happy; he could tell. She'd barely refrained from jumping up on the nearest table and dancing when he'd told her why he agreed right away with Herb's theory on the nature of Walker's about-face. He took very real pride in her jealousy and possessiveness. For all that, he was going to be sorry to lose the girl he had truly begun to like.

Worse, he would be equally sorry to learn for sure that she was his and give up the security blanket of privately thinking he had an excuse if he didn't quite put the effort into connecting with Dani that he put into connecting with Jack.

How very Victor Lord of him.

"Hey." Blair ran her hand down his face the way she did. "Either way, it's going to be okay."

"Open it already," he whispered hoarsely.

He knew the answer long before she said anything. The vindictive, vicious, victorious gloat flashed across her face before she composed herself into the alleged generous adult who thought only of the well-being of others took over and gently told him that he'd been right.

"Stick it in the safe," he ordered. Admissible in court or not, they couldn't very well leave the thing lying around for anyone to stumble across and wonder at. And he sure as shit wasn't going to destroy it, not yet.

"Todd..."

He wasn't in the mood for sympathy. "You want Jack to find it and think we were testing him? You know he would."

Blair vanished to put the test away.

Todd poured himself three fingers of scotch and began to contemplate his testimony.

_"Your Honor, DNA doesn't matter to my wife or to me or to any real parent. I know it doesn't matter to the petitioner, or she would never have pretended Ross Rayburn wasn't Danielle's father..."_

The piece of shit identity thief Walker Laurence was not going to rip Sam out of his home.

The piece of shit identity thief Walker Laurence was not going to break Blair's heart.

And Tea Delgado was not going to get one over on Todd Manning. 


	13. Chapter 13

Amazingly enough, the custody hearing began with not one, but two, agreements.

The first agreement was that none of the children would testify. Todd and Blair accepted the deal primarily because they didn't know for sure what Jack would say if push came to shove and because they didn't want Dani anywhere near the proceedings. Starr hadn't cared for the decision at all and had stomped off blazing with an anger so visible that Todd had almost felt sorry for Travis. No one bothered to repeat to Starr that her perjury on the matter of Walker's plan to kidnap Hope was a matter of public record and cut hard against her credibility. She liked that explanation less and less every time she heard it.

The second agreement came as a shock to Todd. The time-stamped photographs of Sam and Hope in the mall were dutifully offered into evidence. After 15 minutes of discussion regarding whether Tea and the judge wanted Herb to call expert witnesses to testify to PTSD as it pertained not only to Todd but to Walker, Tea withdrew the photographs and agreed to stipulate that Todd and Walker's identity crisis and after-effects of the related torture were equally problematic to both families.

"Why would she agree to that?" Todd asked Herb during a brief recess.

"Because it's the only conclusion the judge will possibly be able to draw," Herb told him. "Remember during the pre-hearing conference when I said that the one thing we shouldn't do was waste the judge's time? Tea is aware of that as well. She's said all along that the case would come down to biology versus continuity, and she's right."

Herb spent the rest of the morning making the case for continuity. Cassie testified about what a wonderful mother Blair was. Langston testified about what a wonderful mother Blair was. Even Tina, true to her word, managed to make herself useful and talk about Todd's love for her own children.

All three of them glared at Walker on their way out. Todd particularly enjoyed that part.

Herb then led Blair through stories of everything from first day of school to first ophthalmologist appointment. Tea barely cross-examined Blair at all. She didn't even try to discredit Blair as a parent. ("If she does, we'll revoke our agreement and call Danielle to testify," Herb promised. "Tea handed her own daughter over to Blair when she thought she wouldn't be around. That makes the unfit parent argument much trickier.")

By the time they broke for lunch, Todd was so convinced that the judge would rule in their favor that he was considering not revealing Dani's paternity on the stand after all. There was no limit to the number of situations where a secret could be useful. Why waste one where it wasn't needed?

* * *

Jack spent the morning listening to Starr as she screamed and whined and vented at Travis that it wasn't fair that what Walker had done to her and Hope didn't matter. He had to admit that, in his heart of hearts, he agreed with Starr that it wasn't fair at all. That aside, he couldn't help being amused that for once Starr wasn't getting her way. He couldn't be a good person all the time; it just wasn't in him.

He didn't share either of those thoughts with Starr and Travis. Drawing their attention to his presence in the morning would make his absence in the afternoon all the more noticeable, not that he couldn't be heading out to wrestling practice or something. But why bother with a lie when he could just disappear?

Jack assumed that his parents- and Walker and Tea- would be less on the lookout for spying teenagers after the morning session was over. Jack hadn't tried to sneak into the hearing in the morning so that their guard would be down by afternoon.

Nonetheless, he made a quick stop at the coffee shop and offered $100 cash to the two largest of the wannabe-playwrights marking time and taking advantage of the free wifi if they would accompany him to court and sit directly in front of him. He couldn't count on blending in; he needed to bring his camouflage with him.

Despite the camouflage, he was spotted as soon as he passed through security and headed for the courtroom door.

_"Jack!"_ hissed Dani. _"What are you doing here? Go home!"_  
_  
"They let you come?"_ he whispered back. He might just be willing to join Starr's chorus of NOT FAIR! after all.

Dani half-shook her head. "No, but-"

"You're sneaking in, but you don't want me to? Please." Dani's attempts to boss Jack around would never not be annoying. She was worse than Starr, really, because at least Jack and Starr had been raised together from Jack's infancy. Dani had just waltzed into the picture, not bothered to introduce herself, and started acting like she was in charge of Jack. Not that Jack didn't love Dani for all that, but she wasn't going to tell Jack do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do.

"They might not notice one of us, but they'll notice both," Dani pleaded.

"So _you_ leave," said Jack.

"I grew up going to court. I know where to sit so they aren't as likely to see me."

"I brought people to sit in front of me. They won't see me no matter where I sit." Jack gestured to his coffee-wielding unemployed wifi thieves.

"What'd you do? Pay them?"

Jack nodded, unashamed.

"That's kind of a good idea," Dani admitted. She peeked into the courtroom. "Okay, we have to get as close to the back left corner as we can. With these guys in front of us, we'll be invisible."

Jack and Dani slumped in their seats as Tea began to question Walker. Walker testified that he had never given Sam up voluntarily and that, now more than ever, it was important that he reconnect with his only biological child as he worked to start his new life.

Jack had prepared for this moment. He had reminded himself that Walker had no legal claim on him and that that was all Walker would mean when he referred to Sam as his only child. He had reminded himself that even if Walker mentioned Dani, that would be different, because Walker was married to Dani's mother. But as Jack began his mental recitation, he realized that the old pain of being the forgotten child hadn't come. All he felt was fear that Sam would be taken thousands of miles away when he belonged down the hall.

The fear got worse when Dani whispered that Walker's testimony had been absolutely perfect. "I get why they didn't take the deal," she murmured almost too quietly for Jack to hear.

"What deal?" asked Jack, but Dani wouldn't answer.

The last witness, apparently, was to be Todd.

"Wonder why they're using him as a rebuttal witness?" Dani asked. "He should have been with the other character witnesses this morning."

Jack shrugged. He only half-understood Dani's comment, but he knew that this was no accident. Their father was going to be more than a character witness, more than Sam's loving stepfather. There was a strategy at play, but neither he nor Dani knew what it might be.

Herb Callison's first questions were about whether Walker had contacted Sam as soon as he was able and how Walker had taken Sam from his school without permission. Todd answered them, and Jack still didn't see the point. Walker had said the same things, with a different spin, during cross examination.

"Mr. Manning, you were adopted yourself, correct?"

"Objection," said Tea. "Opposing counsel is attempting to imply that Blair Cramer Manning is the adoptive mother of Sam Manning. As the Court knows, she is not."

Jack scowled. Tea had always been nice to him, but today she was really being a bitch. He and Sam were brothers and they had the same mother. Nobody but nobody had any business implying otherwise.

Underlying the anger was something worse: guilt. Part of the reason his parents had gone with the no-kids strategy was because they had been afraid of what Jack would say. They hadn't admitted it, but he knew. They'd been worried about it since the day the custody battle had begun and Jack had walked in on their little brainstorming session with Starr. He'd enjoyed worrying them.

He'd been stupid.

He was never going to be able to stop doing stupid things.

Meanwhile, Callison had pleasantly agreed to rephrase his question. "Todd, were you adopted?"

"Yes," said Todd. "I was adopted as a baby. My adoptive father was my biological mother's cousin."

"Obviously no blood tie between your adoptive mother and yourself?"

"No. But she couldn't have loved me any more or been a better mother-"

"Objection. Relevance and beyond the scope," said Tea. Whatever the plan was, Tea was afraid of it too.

"Counselor?" asked the judge.

"Goes to witness credibility," said Callison, still calm, still pleasant.

"I'd like to request a voir dire," said Tea.

Jack looked a question at Dani, but Dani was too caught up in the goings-on to explain what that meant. Dani's body, like Tea's, had suddenly gone rigid. Her breath, like Tea's, was suddenly fast. Jack wondered for a moment whether Dani could have escaped full-grown from Tea's forehead like happened in Greek mythology. Maybe Todd had had nothing to do with it.

Whatever a voir dire was, Tea had gotten it, because Callison stepped back and Tea approached Todd.

"Mr. Manning," crooned Tea, "Did you ever give away your wife's baby and tell her the child was dead because you believed- incorrectly, as it happens- that you were not the father?"

There was a rustle of gasps from Jack's camouflage and the other strays and reporters who had wound up in the courtroom.

This time Herb objected and the judge said something very stern to Tea. Tea withdrew the question and flounced back to her table, stating that she had merely taken a shortcut and helped opposing counsel establish witness credibility.

Jack punched Dani hard in the arm. "Is it too late?" he asked frantically. "Can they go back and let me testify? I can tell them that I forgive Dad. I can tell them that I understand what happened. I can tell them how much I love Sam and that I know Dad would never never-"

Dani cut him off. "Too late. Todd's the rebuttal witness. They can't call you. So be quiet before they find out we're here."

"Are you just saying that because you want your mom and Walker to win?" asked Jack. It had only just occurred to him that he and Dani were on opposite sides. Dani was supposed to be the good girl, the light of Walker's life, the one who would never disappoint him the way Starr and Jack had. Somehow, that had meant that Dani would never have pushed for Sam to move to Tahiti when there was no question that Sam wouldn't want to go.

"Of course not. It's true," hissed Dani, and Jack didn't know what to think.

"I'd like to answer the question that was raised," said Todd when the room had quieted down.

"All right, let's discuss the matter of your son Jack," said Callison, unruffled as if all of this had been planned. "Is it true that you told Blair that he was dead?"

"It is true," agreed Todd. "And I regret it like I regret nothing else in my life- and if you know me, you know I've had a lot of things to regret. I've done everything I can to make it up to Jack. I don't think he quite forgives me."

Jack would always hate himself a little for not standing up and screaming for the world to hear that he did.

"And he shouldn't have to," Todd said. "What he has done is allowed me into his life, allowed me to be his father who comes to his soccer games and talks about girlfriends and buys horses. I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world. I wouldn't trade it with Sam, either. Jack is mine, and it's not because of the DNA. It's about how I feel about him. It's how I feel about Sam. Even Danielle- really, Counselor," and here he addressed Tea, "I bet you didn't even realize I know she's not my biological daughter."

Dani jumped up, but Jack was quicker. He clapped his hand over her mouth, hard, and shoved her to the floor before anyone saw her.

"You say anything now, they'll throw us both out," he whispered in her ear. "If I could shut up when Tea was saying Mom isn't Sam's mother, you can be quiet now." Dani wrestled against him, but Jack didn't let go. He forced her to listen while Todd talked about the deal to trade Dani for Sam- so _that_ was what Dani had meant- and the DNA test he'd done when Walker had backed out.

Tea told the judge that Todd's testimony was irrelevant showmanship that should be stricken from the record.

The judge told Tea that maybe it was time for her closing statement.

Tea's closing statement recapped a lot of Walker's testimony: he loved Sam and he finally had a chance to be with him. When she was done with that, Tea cited one case after another. It seemed like judges in Pennsylvania always favored biology above all else. Jack didn't need Dani to tell him that Tea had done very, very well.

Callison's closing statement was good, too, to Jack's ear. He said everything that Jack would have wanted to say about Llanview being the only home Sam had ever known and Blair his only consistent parent. He talked about how Starr and Jack and Sage were Sam's brother and sisters as far as he knew, and how it would be cruel to separate them because Sam's biological father had had a whim to move to Tahiti. Callison mentioned previous rulings, too, but not nearly so many as Tea.

Jack had expected the judge to retreat and call everyone back in later to announce his decision. Instead, he began to speak right away.

"There is no ruling more difficult than the one I am about to make. There are no good answers where, as here, there is no option but for a child to be separated from one of two loving parents. Regardless of legal status, Sam Manning believes that Blair Cramer Manning is his mother, and for the child's mental and emotional well being, that is all that matters. To be separated from her would be a trauma. To be separated from his siblings and what has been described as a loving extended family would be a further trauma. Unfortunately, the law is clear-"

Jack's body suddenly went slack. The judge was about to announce that the law mattered more than Sam's happiness and the law said that a long-expired foster placement and an official adoption were not the same thing. His hand dropped from Dani's mouth to his side.

Dani took full advantage.

"_I object_," she shrieked. Her voice echoed off the walls. Jack had a faint remembrance of some of the boys at school calling her DanYella.

Dani stormed through the seating area and stopped just behind the lawyers' tables. "Your Honor, I'm Danielle Rayburn. Sometimes people call me Danielle Manning, but that isn't right, is it? One of the things that my mother didn't mention-"

"Daniela!" snapped Tea.

"Dani, sit down," tried Walker. "Please, Dani."

"Your Honor, no one told you that my father, Ross Rayburn, died because of me. They took me away from him and said I wasn't his daughter and he couldn't deal with it, and Mom didn't even care because all she wanted to do was be with the man she thought was Todd Manning. You cannot give custody of an eight-year-old little boy to them. Don't give them custody of a dog. Don't give them custody of a goldfish._ Don't give them custody of a pet rock!_"

"Miss Rayburn," the judge said firmly. "You may sit down, or I will have you removed from this courtroom."

Dani sat.

"Your Honor," began Tea.

"The time for closing statements has passed, Ms. Delgado."

Tea sat.

"I do not care for these shenanigans," the judge said into the thick, tense quiet. "I do not care for calculated reveals of family secrets on the witness stand. But what I like even less is a pattern of manipulations geared toward uprooting a child's life at the parent's convenience regardless of the child's needs. Rather than make a final ruling today, I will grant temporary custody for the time period of one month to the child's father, Walker Laurence. During this time, the child may not be removed from Llanview and the Court will supervise the household."

"Is it the Court's attention to make new law based on the rantings of a teenager who was neither a part of these proceedings nor under oath?" asked Tea. "The case law is very clear on the matter-"

"I do not find this situation clear, Counselor." He looked at Callison. "Physical custody to be exchanged at the end of the week." Back to Tea. "The social worker will be in touch."

* * *

Todd didn't think he'd ever seen Blair wring her hands before.

"If Dani showing up like that didn't sway the judge, nothing will," she said.

"It did sway the judge," Herb told her. "He was not going to rule in our favor. He's buying time to find a way to do that."

"Or to wait for them to screw up," said Todd.

"I agree, that's what he's hoping for."

Todd wasn't a fan of hoping for things. He was a fan of making things happen.


	14. Chapter 14

They had hidden it for as long as they could while hoping for the best, but now Sam had to know. Blair thought about sending Todd away and giving Sam the news one-on-one, but decided against it. Sam loved Todd and she needed Todd.

Short months before, Sam had asked Todd to adopt him and the idea had not seemed all that farfetched. Their world had changed since then, and not for the better.

They sat Sam down in the kitchen. Blair could see the wheels turning behind Sam's bespectacled eyes as he noticed how very serious they were. Did he sense, like Blair had always been able to do back in foster care, that his world was about to be turned upside down?

"Were you a good boy for Starr today?" Blair began, as if small talk were the way to start this conversation.

"What did Starr say I did?" Sam asked, outraged. "I didn't do anything! I played Z-Box and I read my Spiderman book and I walked Jose and visited Tetris in the barn and I played Disney superheroes with Hope!"

Everything inside of Blair clenched even harder than it already had. She hugged Sam to her and the world spun backwards around them. "You didn't do anything wrong, sweet boy. Starr said you were perfect, like you always are. I know sometimes it's hard to play with Hope because she's younger and she can't keep up with you."

"She's okay," said Sam generously.

"You know your daddy went away for a while, but he came back and you've been able to visit him again. Isn't that nice?"

"Yeah," agreed Sam.

"Your daddy thinks it's so nice that he wants you with him all the time. He wants to take you with him when he moves back to Tahiti."

"We're moving to Tahiti?"

"You know your daddy is married to Tea, and Dani would be there."

"And you," prompted Sam.

"No, baby. Not me. You and Daddy and Tea and Dani."

"What about Starr and Jack and Hope and Sage?"

"They're staying here with your Uncle Todd and me."

"Jack always comes with me when I stay at Dad's."

"Not this time, Sam. You're a big boy and you're going to go without Jack. You always used to think it was special when you got a chance to be with Dad and not Jack, remember?" _Although you might not have thought it was quite so special if Walker had ever bothered to spend time with either of you,_ she refrained from adding. Throughout her adult life, she had had ample opportunities to practice not badmouthing her children's fathers in front of them. This one was harder than most. As vicious and vengeful as Todd had been in their misspent youth, she had never doubted his love for Starr or his desperation to stay in her life. Walker's interest in Sam had never been more than theoretical.

"But I want to stay with you!" said Sam, and Blair hugged him again so he wouldn't notice how close she was to tears.

"I want you to stay here, too. But the judge decided that because your daddy hasn't gotten to see you much, it was his turn to be with you."

"Why does the judge get to decide?" Sam demanded.

"Judges decide things when families can't decide them for themselves. Your daddy and I couldn't agree because I wanted you to stay here and he wanted you to go with him."

"I'm telling Dad I don't want to go," Sam announced with the air of someone who had found a solution.

Blair couldn't bring herself to tell Sam to do otherwise.

"You do that, Sam," Todd encouraged. "Tell him every day."

Sam scowled and ran out of the room.

* * *

Starr had been waiting, tensely, for a sign that her parents had told Sam the news. She got it when she heard his feet pounding up the stairs. It was funny that, without even trying, she had long ago learned the difference between the way Sam pounded on the stairs because he was angry and the way Sam pounded on the stairs because he was excited.

She knew so many little things about Sam that Walker had never learned because Walker had been busy raping Marty and torturing Cole.

Every morning she felt a rush of righteous gratitude when she remembered anew that Walker had not turned out to be her real father. Todd had returned and the world made sense again.

"Poor Sam," she said.

"It's going to be tough for him to have to move all the way to Tahiti," Travis replied. He started to take Starr in his arms, then stopped and stepped back. Travis had a gift for knowing when to touch her and when she was too damn pissed to want that kind of mundane comfort.

"I meant, poor Sam because Walker turned out to be his father for real and there's no way out of it like there was for me," she elaborated.

"You loved him a lot back when I first met you. When he came to Central Park and saved you from that Laser guy, he did things most parents couldn't do."

Starr eyed Travis suspiciously out of the corners of her eyes. "That was then. There was a point where he stopped caring about all of us except Dani. Sam is better off here, and everyone other than that judge knows it."

"I'm not defending the guy," said Travis quickly.

"Good."

"He always thought I was a punk."

Starr almost smiled. "Well, Punk, have you got any idea how we're going to stop this?"

"We could lure Tea and Walker into the museum and lock them in one of the storage rooms in the basement. People don't check those for years, sometimes."

Starr considered that.

"Maybe it needs refinement," said Travis after a moment.

"The museum_ is_ huge," Starr agreed. "I thought I went all over it when I was a kid, but those places we went when I was helping you with that party… looking at the outside of the building you really wouldn't think there were so many places off-limits to the guests. That party was such a great time for those kids."

Travis pulled out his phone and brought up a calendar. "Maybe that's something we can do to help Sam," he said.

* * *

Sam stomped hard on every stair to make sure everyone in the house knew he was good and mad.

He did walk quietly past Sage's room, though, because she was practically the only one who hadn't been keeping secrets from him. Mom and Uncle Todd and Starr and Jack had all known that the big boring thing that everyone was worried about had been Sam himself, and none of them had bothered to tell him. Mom and Uncle Todd and even Starr were just doing that grown up thing where they acted like kids were stupid, but Jack was a different matter.

Sam counted on Jack to tell him things the grownups didn't want him to know, like the worst curse words and where babies came from. (That was the grossest thing Sam had ever heard, but he still didn't want to be the only one who didn't know.)

Sam walked into Jack's room and knocked his headphones off of his head.

"What do you think you're doing?" demanded Jack. "You aren't even supposed to be in here unless I say you can be in here. And I didn't say!"

"You didn't tell me they were sending me to Tahiti!"

Jack's whole face changed. It slackened and froze while Jack let the headphones fall to the floor. At any other time, being able to stun Jack this way would have been the highlight of Sam's life. Today there were more important things to discuss.

Jack closed the bedroom door—with Sam inside, almost unheard of—and then picked Sam up and put him on the bed.

"They told you?" Jack whispered.

"Yes," Sam whispered back, even though there was no reason to be whispering because everyone had known all about Sam's life before Sam.

"What do you think?"

Sam hadn't expected that. He was a kid. People didn't ask what he thought. The judge certainly hadn't. "I think it fucking sucks," said Sam, using the most grownup word he knew so Jack would keep taking him seriously.

Jack nodded. "It does fucking suck," he agreed.

"When did they tell you?" Sam persisted.

"The judge decided this afternoon. I snuck in. I'm probably in trouble when Mom and Dad remember that."

"You should've taken me."

"They would have noticed a little kid."

"I would've put glue on the judge's chair and made him sit there until he let me stay."

"I think he'd just put you in juvie if you did that."

"I'd rather be in juvie than Tahiti!"

"You wouldn't like jail."

"If you can do it, and Starr can do it, then I can do it."

"Whatever," said Jack, and Sam figured that that meant Jack knew he was right.

"I just have to get arrested. You can come visit me like Hope used to visit Cole. Do they let horses visit you in jail?"

"I'm pretty sure they don't."

Sam wrinkled his nose in distaste. That was a flaw in his plan. "How long do you think I'll have to stay in jail before they forget that I'm supposed to go to Tahiti? A week?"

"That's not how jail works."

Sam ignored Jack. "I just have to do something bad enough to get arrested."

"Or you could do something bad enough so Walker and Tea don't want to take you."

Sam forgave Jack on the spot.

That was a great idea.

* * *

Starr came into the kitchen leading Travis by the hand. "Mom? Dad? Travis had a great idea."

"It was Starr's idea," Travis demurred.

"Travis," said Starr pointedly, "works at the science museum and they have overnight parties for kids there. They're for Girl Scout troops and summer camps, usually, but sometimes parents who have a lot of money throw a private party."

"I'm a parent who has a lot of money," said Todd with false levity.

"Right. Just in case Sam does have to leave, I want him to have a chance to say goodbye. Every time you took me out of a school when I was a kid, you never gave me a chance to say goodbye. It just happened. I never got to have a real friend I went through school with until Langston. Let's invite everyone in Sam's grade to a sleepover at the museum. If he ends up leaving, it'll be a goodbye party. If he doesn't, it'll just be a party. Okay?"

"Sounds like you have it all planned out," said Blair numbly.

"We need a check and an adult chaperone for every four kids. The museum takes care of the rest. They had a cancellation this Friday," Travis said.

Todd wordlessly stood up and wrote out a check for Travis. Travis filled in the amount and Todd nodded.

"We'll end up with about forty kids, so that's ten chaperones," said Starr. "The four of us, Jack, Langston, Jessica and Brody, I'll get Schuyler to do it, and River? That works." She produced a form and filled it out. "We'll go print out the invitations and Sam can bring them into school tomorrow."

Starr and Travis went off to get started.

Todd and Blair weren't alone for long enough for Todd to prod Blair into having some kind of reaction—swearing, crying, plotting to kidnap Sam (a plot he would be happy to help with)—before Jack turned up.

Where Starr had announced her presence, Jack came in so quietly that Todd saw him before he heard him. Where Starr had had a plan and an expectation that everyone would go along, Jack mumbled a quiet "I know this is a bad time" when Todd caught his eye.

"What's going on?" Todd asked.

"I'm sorry," said Jack.

"For?" Todd honestly didn't know. Jack had snuck into the hearing without permission, but Todd was more pleased with the ingenuity Jack had shown than annoyed that Jack had broken a rule Todd would never have laid down if he'd thought Jack was capable of sitting down and shutting up. There would certainly be no punishment forthcoming for that.

"For not helping with the custody stuff more. Or at all."

"There's nothing you could have done," Blair told Jack. "It all came down to Sam not being formally adopted. It wasn't as if the judge thought Sam didn't have a happy home. You were there, Jack. You heard him."

"Yeah." Jack looked Todd in the eye and Todd almost jumped. Jack looked him in the eye like Blair looked him in the eye. "I heard you testify, too."

"And?" asked Todd cautiously.

"If they'd let me talk, I would have told the judge that I understand about you telling Mom I was dead and I forgive you."

"Thank you, Jack," said Todd before his throat closed up and he couldn't say anything.

"And I'm sorry about how I acted when Walker came back. He raised me and sometimes he was really good to me, but you're my dad."

It was the last thing Todd would have expected Jack to say.

"That was a very nice apology, Jack," said Blair, and Todd loved her for having words when he didn't. "You have grown up so much these past few years. I'm so proud of you."

"Me, too," said Todd, and that was enough. 


	15. Chapter 15

Starr surveyed Sam's party, pleased with her own work. The only hiccup in her plans had been Langston and River being unable to keep the chaperoning commitment she'd volunteered them for. In their place they'd had the nerve to send Adriana, the very person who had tried to send Sam away from his proper family the first time this had happened. But Jack and Sam were inexplicably fond of Adriana, so Starr let it slide, all the while questioning her brothers' taste.

To fill the final chaperone slot, Adriana had brought along her niece, Jamie. Starr assumed that Jamie had actually wiggled her way into being invited so as to get closer to Jack. That, Starr didn't mind at all. Jack was far more patient, friendly, reasonable, and otherwise tolerable when he had a girlfriend.

Schuyler, at least, had come at Starr's request. Starr watched as he tried to turn the science museum into an actual learning experience for some of the over-excited eight-year-olds. It was a valiant attempt.

Starr really liked Schuyler. She was almost sad that he'd kept to himself so much since being released from prison that he'd been able to acquiesce to her unexpected demand that he help supervise a children's party.

"Any special reason you're staring at your ex?" Travis asked.

"He's not really my ex. We weren't exactly together," Starr explained without bothering to take her eyes off of Schuyler. Yes, Schuyler was lonely, she decided. She might not be able to fix the situation with Sam, but there were other ways she could improve the world.

"That's reassuring."

This time Starr laughed and kissed Travis on the lips. "I was just thinking that Schuyler should get out more. Not with me. But I don't think he's dated at all for years, literally years."

"Maybe that's his own business."

Starr laughed.

Travis laughed, too. "I know. What was I thinking?"

"What you need to be thinking is that your girlfriend is brilliant and should be in charge of the world."

"Who's your other victim- I mean, the other person lucky enough to be the subject of your plan?" Starr pointed at her cousin. Travis whistled. "It's amazing that she's even prettier now than she was back when you emailed me her picture and told me it was a picture of you."

Starr rolled her eyes. She wasn't jealous, of course, not after so many years, but getting Adriana off the market wouldn't be a bad long-range goal, just in case. Men did silly things. Cole had loved her more than anything, but his eye had still wandered to the meanest, craziest bitches in town, the likes of Brittany Jennings and Hannah O'Connor.

"You like Schuyler. You don't like Adriana. Why are you setting them up?" Travis prompted.

"Schuyler just needs to get his feet wet again. He's not going to fall in love with the first person he dates. He just needs to remember that he can date. Adriana is beautiful, right? So he won't say no."

"And Adriana?"

"Schuyler looks like Rex except better, so I know he's her type."

"So this is almost completely superficial."

"You have to start somewhere," said Starr.

She rushed off to put her plan in action, glad to focus on anything that wasn't the thought of her youngest brother being ripped out of their family. Romantic setups were something she was good at, after all. Hadn't she always been right about her parents?

* * *

A dozen of Sam's classmates chased each other through the two-story-high model heart faster and faster until the chaperones declared it off limits.

Jack took that opportunity to escape into the sudden privacy of the heart himself.

He considered himself to be the least nerdy of his siblings (even Sage was starting to demand "read!" any time she saw a book of any kind), but he still loved the Giant Heart. It had always been the highlight of any field trip to the Franklin Institute.

And he would not let the fact that his first memory of the Giant Heart included Spencer Truman talking about atriums and ventricles while Jack hung on his every word ruin it.

And he would not accept the way the Giant Heart suddenly echoed with emptiness as foreshadowing of how everything was going to seem empty without Sam.

He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them, watching the flash of the massive EKG in the next room as it occasionally tossed a reflection inside the heart.

He quickly became so lost in the rhythm that he jumped, hard, when someone joined him inside the dark chamber.

"Sorry," said Jamie. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"No problem." Jack readjusted himself and gestured that Jamie should sit down, too. She did, and even Jack could see that she did it just slightly too eagerly.

It was odd to see a girl so openly interested in him. Like Neela, Jamie hadn't had a front row seat to The Torment of Shane Morasco by the Villain Jack Manning. Unlike Neela, Jamie had strong family ties in Llanview and some clue about how American social systems worked, although she wasn't a big fan of bowing down to social mores if her insistence on playing boys' soccer was any indication.

Jamie knew what she was doing.

This little girl- two years younger than Jack- knew what she was doing when she followed him into the Giant Heart and turned sparkling eyes on him.

And there, in the midst of his grief over Sam and his memories of Spencer Fucking Truman, Jack was damned if he didn't want her to do it.

"What are you hiding from?" Jamie asked.

"Nothing," said Jack. "Just taking a break."

"Hmm," said Jamie.

"Are _you_ hiding from something?"

"Jessica," said Jamie firmly, to Jack's genuine surprise. Perhaps she hadn't followed him after all? Was he getting too sure of himself? He was just starting to trust his own judgment again...

"Why would you hide from Jessica?"

"Sometimes I don't like to see her." Jamie closed her eyes. "Did you know she was almost my mother? She was married to my dad when I was a little girl. She said she was going to adopt me."

Jack shrugged. That sounded vaguely familiar, but he'd been a kid himself. "Then they broke up?"

"Not exactly." Jamie's words were clipped. "She stood up in front of the judge, and when the judge asked if she wanted to adopt me, she said no, and ran out. Couldn't decide that she didn't want me earlier. She had to decide right there in front of me. Sometimes I feel like such a freak when she looks at me." Jamie stood up and sat next to Jack instead of across from him. "Sam is so lucky your mom loves him so much. She didn't make it about what man she wanted to be with. She made it about how she committed to love a child and she put that first."

"My Mom is awesome," Jack agreed. "Now she's getting her heart broken over it. We all are."

"Sam is going to end up staying with you where he belongs," said Jamie so firmly that Jack believed her. Her face was inches away from his. Slowly, so that she could have a chance to back away if he was reading her wrong, he leaned in to kiss her.

She didn't move. She kissed him back.

"That okay?" he asked.

"I've wanted that since the first day of soccer practice when you laid down the law that no one was going to give me a hard time. No, I've wanted it since the day I saw you at Uncle Cris and Aunt Layla's wedding."

"I was pretty sure you wanted to kill me that day."

"For a minute. Then I wanted to kiss you."

And she kissed him again.

Jack was never going to think of Spencer Truman in the Giant Heart ever again, that was for sure. This was one of the best nights of his entire life.

Then, as had often happened over the years, Starr showed up to put her own spin on things.

He heard his sister's footsteps before she made it into the heart and was able to put a couple of inches between himself and Jamie so they looked more or less innocent.

Starr grinned a know-it-all grin. "Hi, Jack! Hi, Jamie!"

"Hi, Starr," said Jamie with the same eager-to-please vibe that Neela had always given off around Starr. Jack wondered why his girlfriends (was Jamie his girlfriend? Starr hadn't let them get as far as discussing it) always wanted Starr to like them. He thought maybe he would rather have a girlfriend who thought Starr was an idiot.

"What do you want?" Jack asked.

"So glad you asked, little brother." Starr squeezed herself into the nonexistent space between Jack and the wall of the heart. "It involves matters of the heart." She patted the wall.

"You have thirty seconds," said Jack, not in the mood for one of Starr's star turns.

"Go find your buddy Adriana and talk Schuyler Joplin up to her."

"Maybe Adriana doesn't like Schuyler Joplin. Not everyone is as into the drug-addict, rageaholic type as you are."

"See to it that you get her into it!"

"They have nothing in common!"

"Adriana thought it was cool that he was being such a nerd about those games he was playing with the kids. She liked that he was confident enough to be himself. She said so," Jamie put in.

"Fine." Jack stood up and offered Jamie his hand to help her up, too. "We're going," he told Starr. It wouldn't do to have his first fight with Jamie before he'd ever asked her out on a first date.

* * *

Todd had been helping Hope and her little friend Sierra Rose- invited to keep Hope from bothering the older children- follow butterflies through a massive case and had lost track of time. He was late for the carefully planned story hour by the time he and the little girls found Blair, but he saw quickly that it didn't matter. The older kids were still running wild, not yet anything close to ready to settle down and rest for a few hours.

Sam he could see holding court near a machine that let the kids simulate earthquakes by jumping up and down.

As usual, Todd's heart pounded and his chest tightened up when he didn't see the rest of his family. He wondered if this gift from Mitch and Irene was permanent. Maybe next summer, on the two year anniversary of his escape, the fear would go away.

He wasn't counting on it.

"Where are Starr and Jack?"

Blair laughed, and her amusement was an instant balm to Todd's panic. "Jack was trying to make time with Jamie Vega in the big giant heart over there."

"Smooth," said Todd. "Points for symbolism."

"But Starr interrupted their little get-together because she wants Jack to help her push Adriana on Schuyler Joplin. Oh, but she's being so subtle that no one else could possibly see what she's planning."

Todd considered. "I don't care about either of those people, so Shorty can do what she wants."

"She gets five more minutes and then it's storytime." Blair pressed her side against Todd's. "Personally, I'm looking forward to hearing some fairytales."

Todd thought that he might be inspired.

* * *

"What's your favorite fairy tale?" he asked the assembled children ten minutes later. Jessica was perched beside him with a collection of books, but Todd didn't expect to need them, at least not yet.

At first there were some groans and protestations that fairy tales were for babies; then, Bree helpfully called out "_The Little Mermaid_! Ariel looks like my Aunt Natty."

"Wouldn't be a tragedy if a witch took _her_ voice away," Todd muttered. Jessica slapped him gently upside the head.

"Oooo!" chorused the children, more interested now that violence was involved.

"All right, _The Little Mermaid._ Once upon a time there was a mermaid princess who lived under the sea with her family. The thing she had going for her, other than the whole rich, living in a palace thing, was that any man who heard her sing fell in love with her."

He caught Blair's eye. Jessica noticed and stifled a giggle.

"The princess didn't like to sing, because she was too busy going to school and running her own business- she sold eyeshadow to the fish- and she didn't have time to deal with every man she came across falling in love with her. One day she lost a bet and she had to sing. Naturally the man who heard her fell in love. What do you think she did?"

"She gave up her voice so she could live on land with him!" Bree piped up.

"Wrong! The sea witch offered, but the princess said she would never give up her voice for any man. He might be a prince or a lord or something, but he was still a lesser form of life. Meanwhile, the prince overheard her and told the sea witch he was going to kill her for even suggesting it. And he did, and he took the sea witch's magic, and the princess decided he might not be so bad after all, so they found a way to split their time between land and sea and lived happily ever after."

Blair still looked more amused than sad, so Todd congratulated himself on a job well done.

"Sam! What's your favorite fairy tale?"

Todd fully expected Sam to tell him _Beauty and the Beast_. All of their children had, through osmosis, learned to adopt that as their particular story.

"_The Juniper Tree_," said Sam, and Todd was taken aback. He hadn't ever noticed his superhero-loving stepson delving into dark fairy tales, although of course Sam had heard them all. Sam's bedroom was lined with ornate anthologies of fairy tales as well as comic books, and he had chosen a story that wouldn't need much modification at all.

"Once upon a time a woman wished for a child as red as blood and as white as snow. Someone threw her off a building, so she thought that she would never have the child, but the child came to her anyway, as if by magic. She loved him more than anything and she named him Sam. But the fall off the building had nearly finished her off, and she asked to be buried beneath a juniper tree.

"Sam's father remarried, and his new wife had a daughter. The new wife was jealous of Sam and threatened by Sam's mother. She wanted her daughter to be the only child Sam's father loved. One day she offered Sam an ice cream sandwich, and when Sam reached for it, she slammed the freezer door on Sam's neck so his head fell off. Then she wrapped a scarf around Sam's neck to cover up what she had done and told her daughter, Danielle, to go get Sam.

"Now, Danielle, despite her mother, was a good girl and she loved Sam. She was horrified when she reached for Sam and his head fell off. Danielle's mother told her that they would cover up Sam's death so Danielle wouldn't get in trouble. She took Sam's body and cooked it into a carne guisada puertorriquena in her caldero, and fed it to Sam's father when he came home. Sam's father ate it and didn't notice a difference, because unfortunately he was an idiot.

"Then Sam's stepmother buried his bones under the juniper tree next to his mother.

"A bird flew out of the tree and sang a beautiful song to the owner of the local sporting goods store:_ my mother, she killed me; my father, he ate me; my sister decided that they were both so ridiculous that she ran away to find someone sane to live with_. The owner was so moved that he gave the bird a set of weights. The bird flew back to his home, carrying the weights in his mouth, and dropped them on his father and stepmother's heads. As soon as they collapsed, Sam and his mother came back to life from beneath the juniper tree and decided to go live in a palace with Sam's Uncle Todd. They lived happily ever after. The End."

The children clapped.

"You don't think that's a bit much?" Jessica hissed in Todd's ear. "The wicked stepmother killing her stepson?"

"I can't help it if that's how the story goes. Sam knew that when he asked for it." said Todd. Neither Blair nor Starr nor Jack was giving him a disapproving look.

It seemed that they had all crossed the line from sad to pissed off. Todd knew the feeling.


	16. Chapter 16

Four days after the party at the museum, Todd and Blair drove Sam to Walker and Tea's house, along with all of his school things, most of his clothes, and some of his toys. Sam didn't say very much. He didn't like the way Mom was almost crying, so he promised her that everything would be fine.

Which it would.

He had a plan, and that plan did not include him going to Tahiti where there was no Jack or Starr or Hope or Sage or Bree or Jose or Tetris or Todd or Mom.

First, Sam tried what Todd had suggested: he told Dad that he did not want to go to Tahiti, and that instead he wanted to stay in Llanview with Mom.

Walker said that he was a kid, and kids didn't get to make those kinds of decisions for themselves, but that Sam would learn to love Tahiti. It was all very stupid.

"Dani ran away and so will I," said Sam.

"Dani didn't run away. She's in Tahiti and we'll see her when we get there." Sam doubted that. From everything he'd overheard, Dani was _really_ mad at Tea.

The next thing Sam did, after the adults finished their preliminary fussing, was walk into Tomas Delgado's room. Dad and Tea wouldn't have any reason to come in there, so he'd be halfway through his path of destruction before they even knew they had a problem.

Sam's eyes lit with delight when he saw Tomas' paints and canvases scattered about the room. This was going to be fun.

There was a good-sized container of black paint right on top of pile, and Sam opened it after only a little trouble. He used it, and the biggest brush Tomas had, to scribble smiley faces and bad words all over the boring landscapes Tomas had painted. Personally, Sam thought it was an improvement.

Sam's mouth fell open when he flipped the last painting to the floor and found, behind it, a portrait of his mother.

Tomas had _no business_ painting Sam's mother.

Sam didn't settle for painting over the portrait. He put it on the floor and jumped up and down on it. When that didn't do enough damage, he opened every jar of paint—Tomas had a lot of colors—and poured them, one after the other, on top of the portrait.

Then he carried the portrait, dripping with a red-brown-green-blue mess of color, into the bathroom and deposited it in the bathtub. On top of it, he placed all of Tomas' clothes. (He only had to make two or three trips; luckily, Tomas didn't have much of a wardrobe. Sam never could have fit the contents of Mom's or Aunt Dorian's or even Starr's closet into one bathtub.)

There was a bottle of wine hidden in the back of the closet. Sam didn't know how to open it properly, so he just threw the bottle against the tiled wall of the bathroom three, four, five times until it shattered and sprayed dark red liquid all over the clothes and the wall. He turned the shower on for just a few minutes so the wine could mix with the paint and the clothes.

Then he left the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

He found Tea in the kitchen, looking at her laptop and drinking coffee out of a paper cup.

Tea loved that laptop.

Sam almost felt bad about what he was planned to do next, but he couldn't worry about things like hurting Tea's feelings when he was trying to keep himself from getting sent to Tahiti.

"Hi Sam," said Tea. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," said Sam, even though he wasn't. "Is there any ice cream in the freezer?"

"Go check," Tea said in the way that meant she'd gotten his favorite flavors just for him. What he was about to do _really_ wasn't very nice.

"I can't reach," Sam said, even though he could, if he stood on his toes.

"Can't you? Well, the freezer in our house in Tahiti is underneath the fridge, so you'll always be able to reach it. And it's always warm enough for ice cream in Tahiti." She winked at him, like the idea of going to Tahiti could possibly make him happy.

So he hardly felt bad at all when he poured his coffee on Tea's keyboard as soon as she took a step toward the freezer.

"_Sam_!" she shouted, and Sam felt Walker's footsteps echoing from somewhere upstairs. "I know you didn't do that on purpose," Tea said in a quieter voice just as Walker came into the kitchen.

"Yes, I did," said Sam.

"It's okay, it's okay," Tea was repeating, more to herself than to Sam. "Everything was saved."

"What happened?" Walker took in the sight of the sopping laptop and empty coffee cup. "Did you do this, Sam?"

"I am not going to Tahiti," said Sam. He opened a cabinet and started breaking glasses, flinging them to the floor one right after the other.

"Go ahead," Walker told him. "I never liked those anyway."

"Walker, he could hurt himself," Tea worried as Sam moved on to the plates.  
_  
Smash, smash, smash._ It was funny how some of the plates broke in just one or two pieces, but others, that looked exactly the same on the outside, exploded into piles of dust.

"If he hurts himself, maybe he'll learn not to do it next time," said Walker casually.

Sam could almost feel Tea rolling her eyes as he pulled himself onto the counter so he could reach the higher shelves.

"That's it," said Tea, and with some difficulty she hauled Sam off the counter and set him on the floor.

"Let him go," said Walker as Sam struggled. Tea swore in Spanish as Sam's elbow hit her in the face. "He can get it out of his system and find out that this kind of crap changes absolutely nothing."

"He's going to hurt himself," Tea repeated, and she grabbed Sam's arm hard. "Look, he already did."

"Let go of me!" said Sam.

"Look at the bruise, Walker! Is that blood?"

Sam writhed in Tea's grip as Walker came closer. "That's not blood," said Walker. "That's... paint."

Quicker than quick, Tea let Sam go and made a dash for Tomas' room. An instant later, she screamed.

Walker chased after Tea, and Sam chased after Walker. He knew he should have been starting on the living room, but he couldn't resist checking on the results of his work.

"All of Tomas' paintings," Tea shouted. "Walker, these can't be replaced!"

"Thank God," said Walker. "I hope he did a job on that ugly one of Blair."

_"He was only coping with his grief over how he accidentally hurt a woman he came to care about!" _Tea wailed. _"His innermost thoughts! This is a very bad thing you did, Sam, and you're going to be punished!"_

Walker made a 'not really' gesture to Sam as Tea stormed into the bathroom and found the mess there.

_"His clothes, too! This is his entire wardrobe!"_

"No loss, then," said Walker to Sam. "You got all the scarves, right? Good job."

Sam really hadn't anticipated Dad being fine with this. But Dad loved Tea more than anyone or anything in the world. If Sam hurt Tea enough, eventually Dad would give up.

Sam started to scoot in the general direction of Tea's bedroom. Walker caught him around his hips and threw Sam over his shoulder so Sam couldn't move.

"Tea," called Walker. "Sam and I will be in his room. Lock up anything you don't want him to destroy."

There was a new gaming computer in Sam's room, just the same as the one Jack had. Sam refused to play when Walker put the controller in his hands, but Walker didn't seem to care. Walker pinned Sam between the wall and his own body and played the games by himself. A couple of times Sam was almost tempted to help when he saw Walker doing something really, really wrong and getting killed, but he hung tough.

Sam was not playing.

* * *

Somehow Blair knew that it was Walker calling before she even looked at her phone. She lunged to answer it even though part of her thought Walker was just calling to rub it in that he and Tea had successfully taken her baby from her. She had to answer. Something might have happened to Sam.

This was going to be her life from now on, always wondering if Sam was all right. Sam could be hurt, and hours, days, weeks, months might pass before Walker and Tea deigned to bring Blair into the loop.

"Is Sam okay?" she demanded, not bothering with hellos.

"Your little plan didn't work," answered Walker, also not in the mood for pleasantries.

"My plan to raise my son in the only family he's ever known? Yes, Walker, I'm well aware of that." Her heart pounded. Walker couldn't know of the other plans- the plans to buy property in Tahiti under a fake name, the plans to monitor Sam's life, the fake IDs that would be put into use if kidnapping Sam became necessary rather than just desirable.

"Your plan to have Sam be so much trouble that I'd just give him back to you. You thought I'd trade my son for a set of dishes and Tomas Delgado's God-awful portrait of you?"

Blair shook her head to clear it. "What the hell happened?"

"Hurricane Sam happened. Destroyed Tomas' bedroom and the kitchen, but I don't give a shit if he destroys the whole house. He's my son and he's staying with me."

Blair sank to the floor, cradling the phone against her ear. She was suddenly lightheaded with fear. Walker had been so angry with Starr and Jack when they'd begun to rebel, and the older children had worshipped the ground beneath Walker's shoes. How was he going to handle Sam, who was so much younger and who had never properly bonded with his father?

"I always figured it would happen eventually," Walker continued when Blair was silent. "His inner Margaret had to come out sooner or later. Before we know it, he'll be tying women to beds and locking their boyfriends in the trunk of his car."

"Don't say that!" Blair snarled. "He is a sweet, loving, brave, smart, strong little boy, and there is nothing of that woman in him! He's my son, he's not hers!"

Walker laughed. Blair jumped back to her feet, not dizzy any longer, just furious enough to wring Walker's neck from across town.

"Did you say that to him?" she shouted into the phone. "You can't make Margaret Cochran jokes to Sam! Best case scenario, he'll think you resent him because of the way he got here, and worst case scenario, you end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy because you convince him he's cursed!"

Walker laughed harder. "You're hot."

Blair scowled. Naturally Walker would find her deepest fears amusing.

"I meant that in the angry way, not the come-on way. I'm a happily married man, Blair," Walker elaborated. "Damn painting Delgado did of you was the ugliest thing I ever saw. I'm gonna have nightmares, and I don't have to sleep in the same bed as you. You better be glad Todd never saw it. You never would have gotten laid again for the rest of your life."

"What did you say to Sam?" Blair asked, undeterred. "Did you tell him-"

"I did not say anything to Sam about his crazy-ass birth mother."

Blair covered the phone with her hand so he wouldn't hear her sigh of relief. "What did you say?"

Walker still sounded amused, but suddenly much more friendly. "Remember when Starr was a little older than Sam is now? We'd broken up and she wanted us to get back together."

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"She handcuffed herself to the stairway in the Penthouse. Then she put the key to the handcuffs in her mouth and said she was going to swallow it. Do you remember what you told her?"

Blair had been far beyond her limit with Starr that particular day. "I told her to go ahead."

"That's what I told Sam. I told him to go ahead. Starr couldn't make us fall in love by being a brat, and Sam can't change the judge's ruling by being a brat."

"Throwing a tantrum doesn't make Sam wrong. Starr's methods might have been suspect, but she wasn't wrong," said Blair quietly, startled by the memory of a completely different life. "I did love you, then."

"You loved Todd."

"Always. But-"

"No buts. I was brainwashed into loving you and you thought you loved me because you thought I was him. None of that was real."

"Sam is real. Sam is real, and Sam is here because you thought that I-"

"_Don't._" She could hear pain in his voice driving out the mockery and disdain. An unexpected opportunity...

"He has a life here. If you have to be in Tahiti, why isn't having him for the summer enough? That's more than you've ever had him before. Why didn't you call us as soon as you started to recover? I would have flown him down there to see you as soon as you opened your eyes. Why did you go for subterfuge, waiting for me to leave town and then kidnapping him? You never had to sneak around."

"Monster's waking up. Got to stop him before he burns Tea's lingerie. I wouldn't want to lose that."

With a click, their conversation ended.

Blair hadn't had much hope, anyway.

She unlocked the desk drawer and fingered the envelope full of fake IDs. They were more tempting all the time. 


	17. Chapter 17

As they did several times a year, the weather forecasters were predicting the storm of the century. As they did at least once a year, the schools closed before a single flake of snow fell from the sky lest children be stuck in classrooms or on buses after the snow started.

Their home might not be as deep in the woods or as far up the mountain as the one she had dreamed of twenty years before, but Blair still figured that it was just as well that they all stay in that day. She didn't like the idea of Jack and Starr driving any more than she liked the idea of Hope or Sam being stuck on a school bus.

Her body tightened up. She doubted that there were any snow days at the schools in Tahiti.

Out of nowhere, Todd took her hand.

"Come on," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"I need to go into the Sun, and you need to come with me."

"Todd, it's about to start snowing."

Todd rolled his eyes. "In a few hours, it will be snowing. Unlike the majority of the idiots around here, I learned to drive in a place where it snows. We'll be fine."

She called a hasty thank you for being in charge over her shoulder to Starr and let Todd lead her away. The feel of his hand- big and warm and powerful- on hers was hypnotic even though they'd been back together for over a year.

She didn't bother to ask why he needed her at the Sun. If he said he needed her, he needed her. Sometimes it was nice not to ask questions. Sometimes it was nice to revel in her ability to trust him. He loved her and he'd come back to her and he would do anything in his power to take care of their family.

"You're quiet," Todd said when they were ensconced in his office.

"Just thinking," she said. She ran her hand idly along the back of the couch. They'd made love there more than once. "Thinking about how glad I am that you're back. How much I missed you. How much I love you."

There was a stunned-happy look on his face that twisted her heart.

"Do I not say that to you enough?" she asked when he had pulled her close and kissed her. "I'll tell you more often," she resolved before he had a chance to answer. "Compliments used to make you so uncomfortable. I'd tell you how gorgeous you are and you'd make a joke or you'd squirm or you'd go cold like you thought I was lying to you."

He ran his hand down her face. "That's because you got all the good looks in this relationship."

She nestled against his chest. "Some things don't change, after all."

"Love you, too," he whispered. Then, abruptly, he pulled away. "Come on."

Throughout its various incarnations, Todd's office at the Sun had never lacked for hidden safes and hidden doorways to secret exits and secret rooms. She was not surprised, then, when he slid open a wall covered with framed copies of the Sun's most garish headlines. The good of their life together was there: _Rich Playboy Caught in Steamy Love Nest_ over a picture of David and Dorian. The bad was there, too: _Did Poet Pop Pillow Poppa?_ screamed a headline from the Patrick Thornhart phase that had been part of their long separation that had begun with that stupid mercy mission to Ireland. To her shock, she even noticed one of Walker's most cherished headlines: _Like Her Ex Husband, DA's House Aflame._ Todd apparently hadn't been able to resist the slam on Nora even if he hadn't written it himself.

The hidden room was dim, illuminated only by small, covered light fixtures on the wall. It was barren but for a large desk and the sort of chair evil emperors usually sat in in movies.

She didn't notice the wall of televisions until Todd reached for a remote control and clicked them to life one by one. There was a vague familiarity about some of the surveillance footage.

"That's Tahiti," she said at last. "That's..."

"Walker and Tea's front room," Todd pointed. "Kitchen. Dani's room. The room they'll use for Sam. The backyard. This one's on the family Dani's been staying with while Walker and Tea are here. This one's on the outside of the school and this one's on the airport. It's three in the morning there. Not much going on."

They'd talked about monitoring Sam while he was in Tahiti and they'd even made preliminary plans to do it, but Blair had had no idea that Todd had put everything in motion. Seeing it all together made her feel slightly faint. "How many laws are we breaking here, Todd?"

"They're very laid back about things like this in Tahiti," he said.

"Really?"

Todd shrugged. "Who cares? If, God forbid, there's an emergency then we're prepared. If anything happens to Sam, we know. If they disappear, we pull the footage and find out when and where." He took her by the arm and guided her into his evil emperor chair. "Sit down." She buried her face in her hands and he sat beside her on the edge of the desk. "If you hate it that much, we won't use it." One by one, the monitors went blank and faded into invisibility. "We'll just turn this room into our secret love shack."

Blair looked up into his earnest face, inches from her. Her whole body was hit with a wave of excitement. "You can never too many secret love shacks."

"Exactly what I always say." His eyes slid slyly from her to the table on which he sat. "When I bought this, I couldn't decide whether I'd rather bend you over it or just put you on top of it."

She stood up, making sure her hand brushed against his groin as she did. "What if I'd rather have you in that chair?" she asked. She kissed him long and deep. "It's a powerful man's chair, and you're a powerful man. In so many ways."

"I knew spying on people you hate would turn you on," said Todd as Blair helped him off with his shirt.

She stopped what she was doing so she could look him in the eye again. "Being with a man who will go to any lengths to protect our family turns me on. Being with a man who works with me and not against me turns me on."

"And spying on people you hate."

She pushed him gently into the chair and straddled him, wiggling her hips just enough. "Not about them," she said. "All about you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Then before we're done I want to see you on that table."

"That won't be a problem," Blair breathed as she felt Todd's fingers divesting her of her bra.

"Good."

Very, very good.

* * *

Starr sat curled in the window seat with Hope across from her and Sage in her lap. All three of them watched as the first snowflakes plastered themselves to the window. Four or five times, Starr started to tell Hope how much fun it would be to go sledding tomorrow or the next day. Each time, the words died in her throat. She had a hard time imagining taking Hope sledding without Sam.

"Grandpa," said Hope when a car came roaring into view up the long road to their house.

"Grandpa and Grandma aren't coming home until this afternoon," Starr corrected.

"Other Grandpa," Hope insisted. This time, Starr realized what Hope meant. The car was Walker's.

She dragged Sage's playpen close to the window and settled Sage inside. "You and Sage keep looking for the prettiest snowflake," she told Hope. "I'll be back in a minute."

To her wonder, Hope carefully climbed down from the window seat and plopped herself beside the playpen. "Look," she told Sage. "See that one?"

Starr's heart melted. Hope was sweet and generous and gentle and took her responsibilities as Sage's older niece seriously. Sam had been the same when Hope had first come home from Marcie's apartment. Starr and Jack had observed in amazement that the infant Hope's babble had seemed to make sense to the toddler Sam. Sam belonged here now.

Resolutely, she stormed into the driveway to meet Walker, and was mildly disappointed when it turned out that Tea was alone. She would have liked to have given Walker a piece of her mind. She'd barely seen him since he'd gotten back into town; he hadn't even bothered to pretend that they had any kind of relationship.

"Estrella," Tea greeted warmly. Starr noticed that she looked exhausted. Good. She hoped that Sam gave Tea every bit as much hell as Starr had once given Max.

Starr's hands went to her hips. "Don't call me that ever again."

"May we step inside?" asked Tea politely.

"No," said Starr.

"All right," agreed Tea. "I need to speak to your brother."

"That's nice," said Starr. "I'd like to speak to my brother, but you and Walker stole him. Like he tried to steal Hope. Like you tried to steal me."

"Est—Starr, I never stole you. I was married to your father when your mother wasn't able to take care of you. It was one of the happiest times of my life."

"So you decided to recreate it by taking Sam away from Mom, too?"

"Sam is Walker's son just like you were Todd's daughter. Fathers have rights."

"And what was your excuse with Hope?" Starr demanded. "When you decided that Walker shouldn't have to pay for what he was going to do to her, let alone what he did to Marty?"

"That was many years ago and you agreed to go along with the plan," said Tea quietly, as if Starr were being completely unreasonable and it was chore to deal to her. "Now, please let me come inside and talk to Jack."

"Whatever you have to say to Jack, you can say to me. If I think it's something he should hear—which I really doubt—I'll pass it along to him."

"Sam is going to be cooped up inside for the next day or two with the snow. We thought it might be nice if his brother could come over for one of their video game marathons. It might be their last chance. And it would give Jack and Walker some extra time together, too."

Starr considered that. Undoubtedly Tea wanted Jack to distract Sam from his new favorite hobby of destroying everything in his path. But if Tea thought Jack was still on Walker's team, she was in for a nasty surprise.

"I'll see what he has to say," Starr said. "He'll be down in ten minutes if he decides to come."

She jogged back into the warm house, locking the door behind her to keep out the cold and her wicked stepmother.

She waved at Hope and Sage, who were still playing nicely, and dashed upstairs to Jack's room.

"Jack!" she shouted at the closed door. She didn't think he'd bothered to get out of bed after getting the news that school was cancelled. "Get up!"

There was some incoherent mumbling that she assumed meant "go away."

"It's important. I'm counting to five and then I'm coming in. One… two… three… four… four and a half… four and three quarters… fine, whatever!" She flung open the door. As she had expected, Jack was still draped over his messy bed. A pillow and his phone were on the floor; his headphones were tangled in the sheets. "Get up!" she ordered. "There's a top secret spy mission, and only you can do it."

"I'm tired. You do it."

"I wasn't the one who was invited to Walker and Tea's house."

That made Jack sit up. "Why would I want to go over there?"

"Uh, because _Sam's _there?" Starr suggested in her best boy-are-you-an-idiot voice. "You heard what Mom said the other day. He's trying to stop this stupid Tahiti plan by making it not worth the trouble. Someone needs to tell him he's on the right track. You can help him, even! It's too bad Tea's here with her car, or you could take some manure from the stables and put it in her bed."

"That's disgusting."

"That's kind of the point." Starr tugged at Jack's hands to get him on his feet. "Get dressed, get packed, and get going."

* * *

Jack really didn't want to get out of bed in the first place. He was tired and his neck was stiff, probably from hitting it wrong during a wrestling match. Besides, he had never been a fan of acquiescing to Starr's smug, superior demands. And he certainly didn't want to hang out with Walker Laurence, the man whose love for a supposed son had turned to loathing and, finally, indifference.

But he couldn't very well let Sam down.

He dragged himself downstairs. Tea was waiting in her car; Jack smirked a little that Starr hadn't even let her wait inside the house. Once in a while Starr was funny.

"Hi, Sweetie," said Tea. "I'm glad you came."

Jack grunted because he wasn't going to thank her for inviting him and he couldn't very well tell her he was only in this to pat Sam on the back for his bad behavior. He wondered if it would be dangerous to teach Sam to throw up on command. That had worked decently for Jack when he'd been Sam's age.

The thought of throwing up made Jack's stomach roll. He wasn't just tired, he realized belatedly; he was getting sick. He would have to be sure to share his germs with Walker and Tea. He'd spit on their toothbrushes or something, and let Sam watch.

"Walker and Sam will be so happy you came," Tea continued. Jack figured that she was half right, anyway. "Sam's actually on a playdate with Bree this morning, so you and Walker get some one-on-one time. I know he's sorry he can't spend more time with you, but with Todd around…" Tea trailed off.

"Yeah," Jack pretended to agree.

When they got to the house, Jack and Walker talked awkwardly for five minutes before Jack asked to go upstairs and lie down. It didn't escape Jack's notice that Walker seemed relieved.

* * *

Sam couldn't believe his luck at being allowed to have one last playdate with Bree. It gave him a chance he never would have gotten if he'd been safely shuttled between lockdown at his father's house and lockdown at school—the chance to run away.

Bree was skeptical. "Where are you going to hide?"

"Your attic?" Sam asked. That seemed easiest. Bree would be able to sneak him food.

"They'd figure it out if you hid anywhere at Llanfair," said Bree. "That's the first place they'd look."

"Sometimes the best place to hide is the easiest place." Anyone who had ever played hide-and-seek knew that. Then he had a brilliant idea. "And the easiest place is home. In the hay loft in the stables. They can't take all the hay out, right? And Jack will help." He was sure Jack would hide him. "We just have to get there."

Bree's eyes lit up. "I know how."

"How?"

"You get to a stable on a horse!"

She grabbed his hand and rushed him toward the door. _"You can play outside, but put your coats and boots on!"_ Aunt Jessica shouted.

Sam made a face. Even here, the grown ups were always watching.

_"Okay, Mom!"_ Bree yelled back. _"We're going to wait for Sam's daddy to pick us up outside. Is it okay for me to go home with Sam for lunch?"_

Sam shook his head. Bree waved him off.

"Did they invite you?" Jessica came into the room.

"Yes, he just texted Sam," Bree lied. Sam fussed with his boots so Aunt Jessica wouldn't look at him while they were lying.

"Okay," Jessica agreed. "But not too late. We're coming to get you as soon as the snow gets bad."

"Thank you," said Bree, and she hugged her mother goodbye sweetly. Then she grabbed Sam's hand and they ran outside.

They didn't run to the front of the house to wait for Sam's ride that wouldn't be coming for another hour.

Instead, Bree led Sam through backyards and across streets until they were inside a stable. It was empty but for the far stall, where a brown horse stuck his huge head curiously over the stall door.

"Where are we?" Sam breathed.

"My Grandpa's house. He doesn't live here but Beretta is staying here until he goes to Texas," Bree explained. "So we can ride Beretta to your house, and you can hide there, and I'll take Beretta back and they'll never know what happened. And you don't have to move!" Bree hugged Sam excitedly. "I really didn't want you to move."

Bree and Sam were both good at riding horses. Sam had ridden Tetris a lot in the past few months, and Bree's family all thought they were cowboys. It was a good plan, Sam decided.

"Text your dad that you're staying at my house for lunch," Bree instructed. "We need my parents to think I'm at your house and your parents to think you're at my house."

Sam was already texting while Bree stood Beretta beside the mounting block so she could reach high enough to get him ready.

There was a quick fight over who should ride in front and who should ride behind. Bree won because Beretta was kind of sort of her horse, more than he was Sam's horse anyway. Sam had to admit that he was all right with Bree being in charge. Beretta was a lot bigger than Tetris.

They pointed Beretta in the direction of Llantano Mountain just as the snow began to fall thick and fast. Sam peeked down and noticed that the snow was hiding Beretta's hoofprints. They wouldn't leave a trail to follow.

Everything was working out perfectly.


	18. Chapter 18

As the snow got heavier and heavier, Jessica liked the idea of Bree being at Walker and Tea's house less and less. She hadn't had the heart to say no to Bree's request, not when Bree was about to lose her best friend, but she most certainly had the heart to cut the reunion short before Bree got stuck spending the rest of the blizzard with a man who had been willing to let Tess kidnap and murder Natalie.

As soon as Brody came home from work—with the nerve-wracking, ever present threat that he might have to go back if the storm caused havoc in the city—Jessica suggested that they pick Bree up together.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Walker when he opened the door. Not for the first time, Jessica felt like the biggest fool on the planet for ever having believed that this man was her Uncle Todd.

"We came to pick up Bree," said Jessica.

"Maybe your multiple personalities need to have a chat and work out which one of them lost your kid," Walker told Jessica. "Sam was over at Bree's house this morning, not the other way around. That's where they're still supposed to be."

"But then you invited Bree to come back with Sam for lunch," said Jessica. Fear hit her like a ton of bricks. She hadn't actually checked with Walker or Tea. Bree was usually a very reliable child, and Jessica had gotten into the habit of trusting her, especially when it came to her trips back and forth to Sam's house. Sam and Bree were inseparable; it was perfectly normal for them to play at one house and then eat or sleep at the other.

"I didn't invite your brat over here. My brat's enough. The two of them would burn the whole place down."

"So Sam isn't here, either?" she asked. Walker's distracted non-concern for his son's whereabouts was a bit much, even for him. Jessica's eyes met Brody's and she could see him thinking the same thing. Whether they were looking for Bree alone or Bree and Sam might make all the difference between finding their daughter right away and… not. But she didn't have time for self-flagellating and worst case scenarios right now. She had to focus. She was a journalist. Brody was a detective. They knew how to investigate and get results right away.

Walker shook his head in continued non-reaction. No, Sam was not there.

"A lot of times, runaway kids turn out to be hiding at home," Brody injected. "Mind if we check?" Without waiting for an answer, Brody gave Jessica a shove toward the kitchen. "You look downstairs, I'll look upstairs." His hand was already on the banister.

"You don't have a warrant, officer!" objected Walker.

Brody shoved past him anyway. "Why? You have some more amnesiacs you're planning on raping stashed away up there? That is why you bought this place, right?"

He went from room to room upstairs, calling Bree's name and Sam's. He heard nothing; he found nothing in any of the places a child or two might hide. The very last room he checked was Jack's. Jack himself was asleep on the bed, but Brody wasn't bothered at the possibility of waking him. Jack might have been on his best behavior for the past year, but he would always be the kid who had driven Shane to the edge of the high school roof.

Nothing was hidden in the closet or under the bed, so Brody barked "Where are your brother and Bree?" at the lump on the bed.

Jack didn't give Brody the petty pleasure of waking with a start. His eyes fluttered open, but they were bleary and confused.

"The hell?" Brody asked no one in particular. His inner conspiracy theorist wondered if Walker might have drugged Jack to keep him out of the way. He put a hand on Jack's arm, intending to get a better look at Jack's eyes, and was startled by how warm it was. Common decency overcame his dislike for Jack and he brushed his hand against Jack's forehead.

Brody didn't need his combat medical training or parenting experience to know that Jack's fever was too high to be safe.

He sighed and stomped back down the stairs. "Jess? Find anything?"

"No. They aren't here. They aren't at home and they aren't here. Brody, where are they?"

"We'll find them. We'll find them," he repeated, trying to assure himself as much as Jessica. "I'll call it in now."

"Wait!" Tea called them back as they ran for their car. "What's the plan? What can we do?"

"You've done enough," snapped Jessica. "Bree isn't like this. And you know what, Sam didn't used to be either, until you decided that you just had to uproot him to punish Todd and Blair."

"How many times do I have to tell people that's not what happened?" Tea asked no one in particular.

"Take your little mini-me psycho Jack to the emergency room," Brody told Walker by way of parting. "If his fever stays like that for too long, it'll kill him."

"Shut up," said Walker.

"Your funeral. Or his," said Brody. With disgust, he turned to Tea, who was slightly more reasonable. "Go check on Jack. He's sick. It isn't safe. We'll find Sam and Bree."

Jessica was already on the phone with her Uncle Bo, so Brody traded his phone for hers and began, rapid-fire, to give Bo the salient facts.

* * *

Tea was halfway up the stairs when Walker demanded to know where she was going.

"To check on Jack."

"He's fine. This is what Jack has always done. Pretending to be sick is his way of getting what he wants, like sneaking off was Starr's. Was he sick when you picked him up from Blair's house?"

"Not at all," Tea admitted. "But—"

_"JACK!" _Walker bellowed. Tea jumped at the noise. _"ARE YOU DYING?"_

"No," Jack's answer, though groggy, was clear.

"There you go. He's just a teenager trying to sleep all day." Walker opened the door and ushered Tea out. "You know what this is, don't you? This is Todd trying to get back at me because I took Sam without waiting for his blessing when we got back to Llanview. That's where Sam is. They're going to try to get a head start on us during the blizzard. We aren't letting that happen."

"And they're just going to leave Jack?" asked Tea, instinctively poking holes in the argument even though she thought Walker was probably right.

"Todd threw Jack away once. What's one more time? Anyway, this whole hit first, get custody thing was your idea, not mine."

"He's your son," said Tea. "Sam is your son. I wanted you to have your son. The only way that was going to happen was hitting first and fighting hard. I've fought Todd. Blair, too. They don't give up easily."

"We could have shared custody. Sam could have come out during the summer."

"And Blair would have been in your life forever. I was trying to stop this," Tea pleaded. "This whole sick quadrangle you and Blair and Todd and I have going on. We needed to make a clean break, and for God's sake, Sam is your son. Not Blair's. There's a reason you never let her adopt him, right? How did I get to be the bad guy in this?"

"You're not," Walker assured. "But we need to find the kid. Come on."

* * *

While Brody handled the official police side of things, Jessica made the personal calls. She asked Natalie to make sure that both Llanfair and the Buchanan Mansion were searched from top to bottom. There were an infinite number of hiding places in both of those houses, and Jessica held onto the hope that hiding was all Bree and Sam had done.  
_  
But why would Bree need to hide?_ she asked herself. Sam's motivation was obvious; no eight-year-old wanted to be moved halfway around the world, away from the only family he'd ever known. Bree wouldn't want to lose her best friend, so while she would help Sam, she wouldn't have any reason to stay with him. Had they run off together because Bree had decided that Sam was more important than her own family? Or hadn't they run off at all? Bree's deliberate, uncharacteristic lie about her whereabouts seemed to indicate that they had chosen to run, but the custody battle over Sam had been hard-fought and public. Almost anyone who read the society pages knew that both of the children belonged to wealthy families and could have seen this as an opportunity for easy money. And that was even before Jessica considered Todd's enemies, and the lives Tess had torched for fun, and the criminals Brody had helped put behind bars…

"The Amber Alert is going out," Brody told her. "Did you call Todd and Blair?"

"I'm doing it now," said Jessica. She hit the speed dial for Todd before she had decided what to say. There was no good way to tell someone "I lost your kid."

* * *

The morning had gone far better than Blair could have hoped. She'd been looking forward to the blizzard in any case; she liked an excuse to snuggle up with Todd in front of the fire more than she liked almost anything else on the planet. But the detour to Todd's venture into the Lord family tradition of secret rooms had been a welcome preview of her vaguely pornographic plans for being snowed in.

She lay on the desk, sated and spent, and lazily watched Todd watch her. Apparently Todd's imagination had run away with him when he'd designed the room. She liked it when Todd's imagination ran away with him. She liked most things about Todd.

She couldn't believe she'd lasted eight years without him.

Todd's phone rang and he groped awkwardly for his discarded suit jacket.

"Glad they didn't call five minutes ago," said Blair.

"I wouldn't have heard it five minutes ago," Todd said. He looked at the caller ID and appeared to debate answering. "Jessica," he told Blair.

"Take it," Blair decided. "We need to get dressed. We need to get back home, anyway." She rose, stretched, and attempted to disentangle her bra from the light fixture on the far wall.

Then all of the whimsy of the situation fell away with an unpleasant thud.

"Amber Alert? You mean Bree—Sam, too?"

She pressed herself against Todd, not the way she had a moment before, but as a matter of mere practicality; she wasn't going to miss a word Jessica said. "What the hell happened?"

"We don't know. We think they ran away because they don't want Sam to go to Tahiti, because they lied about going to Tea and Walker's for lunch. We checked all over Tea and Walker's and there's nothing there. We're making sure they aren't hiding at Llanfair or my grandfather's house, either. But if they tried to get to your house—"

Blair could get dressed and dial a phone at the same time. She called Starr and ordered her to search every inch of the house and the stable, then to stay put. She called Langston and begged her to do the same at La Boulaie.

"Ask Langston if Herb is there," Todd said, interrupting his own conversation with what sounded like a private investigator. "Make sure he's ready to go back to the judge and say that Walker had custody of Sam for a week before he lost him."

"Technically, it was Jessica lost him," Blair pointed out. "We let Sam stay with Jessica and Bree all the time."

"Shouldn't matter to a good lawyer. Is Uncle Herb a good lawyer or does he suck?" Todd asked.

Blair decided that that was a good point. Langston promised to pass the news on to Herb.

* * *

Starr was delighted when the museum closed at noon, giving Travis enough time to get to Llanview to spend the snow day with her. But they'd barely had a chance to make hot chocolate and curl up on the couch when the phone rang with the news that Sam was missing. She promised to search the house in case Sam had somehow found his way up the mountain, but the search turned up nothing.

Her mother's next instructions were to stay put with Hope and Sage to watch for Sam, and Starr really meant to do as she promised when she promised it. But after five minutes of staying put, she had reached her limit.

She called Jack; his phone went straight to voicemail. He probably hadn't bothered to charge it. Stupid Jack.

"I need to go look," she told Travis. "Sam trusts me, he knows I'm on his side. Wherever he is, he might come out if he sees me. He might not come out for the cops, if he ran away for a reason. Besides, Walker and my dad have been telling him not to trust cops his whole life."

"You want me to stay here with Hope and Sage?" Travis asked.

Starr kissed him. "Thank you."

"Be careful."

"I will."

She was lucky to have Travis.

* * *

Todd and Blair stepped off the elevator into the lobby of the Sun and were confronted with Bo Buchanan.

"I have some things I need to discuss with you," said Bo.

Todd's hands clenched into fists of their own volition. For the past twenty years, Bo Buchanan hadn't met a crime he didn't want to pin on Todd Manning.

Of course Todd was a suspect in Sam's kidnapping.

Of course Bo was going to stop them from actually finding Sam so he could blame them for his disappearance instead.

Todd really wished he'd taken an extra minute to double check the door to his hidden surveillance room.

"Your own great-niece is missing," said Todd. "I'd have thought you'd care about finding her, if not Sam."

"I care about finding both of them. That's why I'm here, Manning."

"So I'm not a suspect?" Todd challenged.

"Of course you're a suspect. The child who disappeared was just the subject of a protracted custody battle and you lost."

"What if you're wrong?" Blair challenged. "What if we have the best chance of finding Sam of anyone and you're keeping us from looking?"

"So I'm going to make this as fast as possible and try not to take you down to the station."

Todd clenched his fists harder. Bo had been a decent adversary, once upon a time, but now he was old and soft. Todd would be able to take him. He'd knock him out, leave him in a closet somewhere, and deal with the consequences later, when they'd made certain that Sam was in no danger of freezing to death.

Blair put her hand on his arm, as if to suggest that they try one more plan before implementing Operation Smash Bo's Smug Face.

"What if you send one of your officers with us now while we look for Sam? That way we aren't losing any time and you can make sure we aren't doing anything that obstructs your investigation."

"So he could overpower my officer the way he did when he broke out of prison last year?"

"Technically, that was Starr," Todd couldn't resist pointing out. Blair's hand tightened on his arm.

"How about Oliver Fish?" Blair suggested. "He's completely loyal to you, he doesn't trust Todd enough to let Todd get the jump on him—I don't think Sierra would even be allowed to play with Hope if it weren't for Kyle—and—"

"Fish is busy," said Bo bluntly. "But you know what, Blair, I'll take your word for it." He pointed at the door. "Go. You find anything suspicious and you call Lovett or you call me. I mean it."

Blair promised. Todd was pretty sure she hadn't even crossed her fingers.

* * *

Riding Beretta turned out to be much, much harder than riding Tetris. It was all Sam could do to hold his balance; he almost fell off every time he stopped concentrating for a second. Bree seemed to know what she was doing, so he let her do it.

The snow swirled around them and he could feel Beretta working hard to climb up a steep hill. Deciding that they must be nearly home, Sam risked a look around.

He didn't recognize anything: not the road or the trees or the mountain itself.

"Where are we?" he asked Bree. Her ear was next to his mouth but he still had to shout to be heard.

"On the mountain where you live!" she shouted back.

"What if this was the wrong road?"

"It isn't!"

Sam twisted around for a better look, and that was all it took.

It was almost a relief to fall onto the cold, wet, snowy ground.

There was no way he would be able to climb back onto Beretta, and he didn't really care. They weren't in the right place anyway.

But the snow was very cold. 


	19. Chapter 19

It took all of Starr's concentration to get her car to Walker's house. The snow was getting worse by the moment; she held her breath and hoped that she wasn't sliding into something she couldn't see when her wheels lost their grip in the snow. In a few years when her education was complete, she was going to take Hope and Travis and move somewhere where it was warm all the time. She really hadn't missed winter last year when she'd spent six months in the southern hemisphere.

Maybe that was what she would do, she mused. She and Travis and Hope could stay in Australia or South America or somewhere during the winter, but come back to Llanview and their family for the summer. She wouldn't want to leave her family completely and forever.

She certainly didn't want Sam to leave.

She gunned the car's engine to get enough momentum to carry her up the small hill to Walker's driveway on the slippery road. She was sure someone had already checked Walker's house carefully, but she was equally sure that this was Walker's fault. Either he was behind Sam's disappearance—Sam wouldn't be the first child he'd planned to kidnap, after all—or he had driven Sam to running away. Walker's house need another looking-over, and one by someone who knew exactly what he was capable of.

Besides, it nagged at the back of Starr's mind that Jack hadn't returned her call. With Sam missing, surely Jack would have charged his phone and kept it close at hand? Jack wasn't a complete idiot, no matter how much Starr liked to tell him that he was.

She didn't bother to knock; instead, she barged into the house and shouted "Hello?"

No one answered. They must have left to pretend to look for Sam, or, worse, to look for Sam for real. She stomped through the living room and kitchen and found nothing of interest. She paused to admire the scope of the destruction that had hit Tomas' room; she couldn't have done better herself. It was amazing how much she and Sam had in common even though they shared no DNA.

Fuck that judge who had decided that they weren't brother and sister.

She proceeded upstairs and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Jack sprawled across the bed in his old room. She had been sure she'd been alone in the house.

Before she could ask Jack what the hell he was doing sleeping when Sam was out there in the cold, though, she noticed that his breathing was shallow and labored. She dropped to her knees beside his bed; she knew that he was feverish before she even touched him.

"God, Jack," she whispered. "Wake up."

* * *

"Stand up, Sam!" Bree ordered shrilly from her perch on top of Beretta the Too Tall Horse. "You need to get back on!"

Sam rolled over in the snow. He didn't feel like getting up. He didn't feel like taking Bree's orders, either. It wasn't fair. Bree always got what she wanted. She'd wanted Uncle Brody to adopt her, and he had. Sam had wanted Todd to adopt him, and instead Sam was getting shipped to someplace no one had ever heard of. Now Sam was lying in the snow, and Bree was towering over him, keeping her balance perfectly.

It wasn't fair.

Sam was just going to stay where he was. The snow could cover him up and no one would ever be able to find him to make him go anywhere or do anything. He closed his eyes.

"Get up, Sam!" Bree whined.

He opened his eyes again. His glasses were covered with water and snow and he couldn't see much through them. Unfortunately, he'd never been able to see much without them. That was another thing that was unfair. Bree didn't have to wear glasses. Sam had worn glasses since he was two.

There was a crack of lightning and a roll of thunder. Bree screamed and Beretta jumped. Sam didn't move, and he felt a little better that he was the only one who wasn't scared of thundersnow. He climbed to his feet.

"What do we do now?" asked Bree.

That was a very good question. Sam didn't know the answer. His Mom would have known the answer, and Todd would have known the answer, but neither of them were here.

Lightning flashed again; Beretta jumped again, nearly unseating Bree. "We have to be calm," he said, because that was what Mom would have said. "If Beretta thinks we're nervous, that will make him more nervous, and it's going to suck if he runs away. So pet him and tell him everything's okay."

Bree did.

While Bree was doing what Mom would have done, Sam had to do what Todd would have done, and that was find a way to escape, even if that meant going backwards.

"Now we turn around the way we came," said Sam. "There's a fence back there and I can climb back on."

Bree and Beretta agreed.

* * *

The first break in the case came before Todd and Blair even got back to the foot of Llantano Mountain.

"Natalie went over to my grandfather's house to see if they went there. Bree likes going over since my dad has a horse in the stables," Jessica told Todd. "Guess what she found?"

"Not in the mood for guessing games," Todd told his former favorite niece. After this, Sarah was officially his favorite again. (He wasn't going to do anything crazy like make Natalie his favorite.)

"The horse is gone and Sam and Bree turned off their phones and left them in his stall. Wherever they're going, they decided to ride Beretta there."

"The horse's name is _Beretta_?" Todd couldn't help objecting. "You Buchanans are nothing if not predictable."

"How hard can it be to find two kids riding a horse?" Jessica asked gleefully. "That's not something people don't notice, even in a blizzard."

"Let me know if you find anything else," Todd said, and abruptly ended the call. He didn't bother to say thank you, not when this was mostly Jessica's fault to begin with.

"That doesn't change anything," Blair said as they crawled carefully around the base of the mountain. "They can't have gotten much further with a horse than on foot. They were probably trying to get up the mountain." She stared hard out her window, then rolled it down to wipe the snow off the outside. Visibility was almost a thing of the past. They didn't have much time left.

"Look on both sides," Todd reminded Blair. "I can't see out my side while I'm driving."

"Right."

"The old road up the mountain is closer to the Buchanan place. There are access roads down on the low part. It would be a lot easier for them to get lost if they turned that way."

"Okay," Blair confirmed, and Todd made the car begin the long ascent.

They spotted a couple of police cars; apparently, the cops had decided to think today and had made a logical conclusion about where Sam and Bree might have gone. But there was nothing else to see but whiteness. It would be so easy to miss a horse, and almost impossible to spot two children who had lost a horse...

"Stop!" Blair shouted. On the edge of the road was the barest hint of a shadow.

Todd knew in his gut that it was them.

* * *

"Wake up," Starr repeated, more loudly and more urgently every time. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Shut up," Jack mumbled at last, and Starr sank back on her heels with relief. "I'm sick."

"I know you're sick." Starr smoothed the hair off his forehead more because it seemed like the thing to do than because it was anything like productive. "You're burning up. You didn't have a fever this morning." He couldn't have. She would have noticed. She would have noticed _this_.

"Stop that." Jack swatted her hand away.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"My neck."

Starr's eyes widened in horror.

Sudden high fever.

Neck stiffness.

Screw her pre-med classes. Anyone who had ever read the warnings the L.U. health center put on the bulletin boards around campus knew the signs of meningitis.

She slid her arms under his back and forced him into a sitting position, ignoring his whined objections. "Get up. We're going to the hospital."

"No. Tired." He tried to lie down again, and it took all of Starr's strength to keep him upright. She longed for the days when she'd been able to carry him around, or at least drag him around. But she would always be able to boss him around, and now it was more important than ever.

"Yes. Emergency room. You just have to get down the stairs and into my car." It seemed insurmountable, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to find a way to do it. They weren't going to wait for an ambulance, not with the streets coated with snow and the first responders stretched thin by the storm and an Amber Alert.

She steeled herself against the task ahead. "We're standing up on three. On three, Jack. One, two, three."

Whether he was responding to the desperation in her voice or he just wanted her to stop talking, Starr didn't know, but Jack let her help him to his feet. He leaned heavily on her as they navigated the stairs and let her shove him into the car.

The drive to the hospital was harrowing. She hadn't been in Tea's house for more than ten minutes, but in that time the snowflakes had turned into tiny, sharp needles that fell sideways instead of down. Starr didn't care. She didn't care about anything other than getting to the doors of the emergency room and screaming _"I need a wheelchair. He's seventeen, semi-conscious, and I'm almost sure it's bacterial meningitis."_

* * *

Blair couldn't stop hugging Sam. Being furious with him- obviously he was going to be grounded for the rest of his natural life- could wait until tomorrow. "You scared me," she told him over and over. "You scared me so much. You can't just run off like that, Sam."

"It wasn't supposed to happen that way," Sam explained.

Further proof that Sam should have been Todd's child.

Blair rarely picked Sam up anymore. He thought he was too old to be held, and he had almost gotten big enough that Blair couldn't have done it if he'd wanted her to. Almost, but not quite. She hugged him to her and carried him to the car. Todd had already strapped a pouting, crying Bree into the backseat and slammed the door.

Todd walked around the car and pushed Blair and Sam inside. "Call the cops," he told Blair, and Blair nodded numbly. She gave Bo the details, instructing that the horse needed to be taken out of the cold as well. _Five minutes, not even, _Bo promised. _Stay there._

She leaned against the seat and listened to Todd talk to Sam. Todd hit all of the major points- "you put yourself in danger, you put Bree in danger, you put that stupid animal in danger"- and Blair was oddly comforted to hear Todd angry but in control. Gone were the days when he had encouraged Starr's bad behavior and forced Blair to be the heavy, the parent no one liked.

"If you'd gotten further into the woods down one of those emergency access trails, we wouldn't have found you at all," Todd continued. "Do you understand that? What if you'd fallen off the horse and it had run away?"

"I did," said Sam. "But I thought about what you and Mom would do and I got back on."

Todd was suddenly speechless. His eyes met Blair's. Sam had just paid them one of the biggest compliments a child could pay a parent.

They turned up the heat, took blankets out of the trunk to cover Sam and Bree, and, as soon as the police arrived to confirm the situation and load Beretta into a van, they drove to the hospital to have Sam checked out and reunite Bree with her parents.

As soon as they arrived at the hospital, Starr flung herself into Blair's arms. "Is Sam okay?" she demanded.

"We think so," Blair assured her. "Starr, what are you doing here? I told you to stay at home with the girls."

"Travis is with them. Mom..." Right then, Blair knew it would be bad news. "I had to come here with Jack. Dr. Lewis is with him now."


	20. Chapter 20

Blair was not amused by the irony as Dr. Lewis covered Jack with cooling pads and Dr. Joplin covered Sam with heating pads. At first she darted back and forth between her sons, but when it became perfectly clear that Sam was in no danger except from his fool of a father, she positioned herself at Jack's side and refused to leave.

"We have him on antibiotics. All we need to do now is break the fever," Dr. Lewis assured over and over. Then he pulled Starr aside and told her, quietly, that she had saved her brother's life by getting him to the hospital so quickly.

"If he lives, you mean," said Starr, who was not in the mood to mince words.

"There are a lot of ways to break a fever and we're trying them all," Dr. Lewis told her noncommittally.

"You're my hero, Starr," Blair told her daughter when they were alone with Jack's raspy breathing the only sound in the room. "Thank you for taking care of Jack. I'm sure he didn't make it easy."

"When does he?" Starr asked. "But that's good, right? Because he won't make it easy on the meningitis either."

"You hear that, Jack?" Blair took one of Jack's warm hands in both of her own. "You fight that fever like you've never fought anything before. And we've seen you fight, so we'll know if you're slacking." Jack's eyes fluttered open when Blair addressed him. He looked half-asleep; nothing more sinister than that. Appearances could be deceiving. "You have so much strength, and so much heart. I need you to use it all."

"Giant heart," Jack managed to reply. "Jamie."

A shot of pain jolted through Blair. Jack was supposed to be thinking about his girlfriend, not about life and death. "Well, if you have the energy to worry about Jamie, you have enough energy to cool yourself right down, don't you?"

"Jamie can come visit you as soon as you're feeling better," Starr promised brightly. Blair nodded in agreement. If Jamie was too young and it was against the rules, they would certainly sneak her in.

Jack's eyes drifted shut again. "Think cool thoughts," Blair urged him. "Think about all those times in your Aunt Dorian's pool."

"Think about the night we spent in jail with Dad," Starr tried. "Remember, we'd all been in the river. The guard didn't want to give me clothes so you gave me your shirt. The floor was cold, and the walls were cold, and the bars on the cell doors were cold. The sheets on the bed were cold. Remember how could the river was when you and Dad jumped off the roof?"

This time, Jack's eyes flew open hard and wide. "Dad?"

Blair squeezed his hand again. "It's Mom. I'm here." To her relief, she saw recognition in his gaze. "Where's Dad?"

"I can get him for you."

"Where's Dad?"

"You can have whatever you want," Blair promised, and she meant it with every fiber of her being.

"You want me to get Dad and you can stay here?" Starr asked softly, gently.

"There's a problem with that," Blair whispered back. She rolled her eyes at herself and the ridiculous situation that had been her family's life for the past two years.

"What?" Starr blanched. "Dad didn't get arrested for punching Walker or anything, did he?"

Blair shrugged. "Not as far as I know."

"Then, what?"

"You've known for a long time that I spent most of my life being called a slut. And hell, I earned some of that."

"What does that-"

"But somehow I never expected to hear my son ask for his father and not know for sure who he meant. He's delirious, and Walker was his father for most of his life. He's been on shaky ground with your father more often than not, especially since Walker came home."

Starr was as serenely confident as she had always been. "I'm sure he means Dad. We were just talking about Dad."

"I don't know how much of that he understood."

"He's furious with Walker. He didn't even want to go over to Walker's this morning. I had to make him. I practically blackmailed him."

Blair shook her head to clear it. "Jack was at Walker's this morning?"

"Tea came over and begged for him to come. I guess they thought he could handle Sam if Sam was stuck in the house for two days. They certainly couldn't."

"But Jack must have already been sick when-"

"He did not have a fever, I swear, Mom!" Some shrill defensiveness crept into Starr's voice. "He was fine when I told him to go with Tea. He was tired, but he was fine! I would never have-"

"Shh." Blair pulled Starr into a hug. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I'd just like to know where Walker and Tea were when his fever started to go up."

"Make sure you aren't near any windows when you ask them. I'll go get-"

"No," said Blair firmly. "Stay with your brother. I'll go get your father."

And then Blair was going to have some very important conversations.

* * *

Todd knew damn well that Schuyler Joplin was a former drug addict who had lost his job as a biology teacher because of his relationship with Starr. Furthermore, he knew that the man wasn't even a real doctor- he was a third-year medical student finishing up his training.

But Todd didn't demand a real doctor because Sam, wrapped up in dry clothes and a heated blanket, clearly had suffered no ill effects from his little jaunt up the mountain. What Todd needed wasn't medical expertise. What Todd needed was someone he could pressure. He decided to start with the direct approach.

"I think it's important that you keep Sam here for at least a few days for observation," he began.

Schuyler looked back and forth between Sam and Todd. "Sam is doing fine, Mr. Manning. He'll probably do better in his own bed-" Schuyler broke off as he registered Todd's point.

"As soon as I get an injunction, he can go back to his own bed," said Todd calmly. "We understand each other?"

"I understand your dilemma, but I can't admit a patient who has absolutely no medical problems."

"It doesn't matter if the health insurance won't cover it," Todd wheedled. "We're good for the whole cost. Balance the hospital's budget on this case. You'll be a hero."

"That's not the way these things work." Schuyler stood firm.

"Then how does it work? What symptoms could Sam have that would make you keep him here? You know what, don't answer that." Todd had had enough brushes with frostbite in his time to know the answer without help. He raised his voice so that Sam would hear him. "Sam says his fingers and toes feel numb, and that he's kind of dizzy."

"My fingers and toes feel numb and I'm kind of dizzy!" Sam parroted loudly. Todd suppressed a smile.

"Fine," said Schuyler. "I'll go examine him again. Maybe call in the attending and see if there's any need to keep him."

"I think that's best," said Todd.

"I think it's pathetic," said Tea.

Todd groaned inwardly. He had hoped that no one had bothered to notify Walker and Tea that Sam had been found. The idea of those two wandering around in the blizzard for hours or days pleased him. It reminded him of the time he'd left Tea on that island in the South Pacific with no plans to notify the authorities of her situation... but Viki had ruined his fun that time, too.

"No one asked you what you think, Delgado."

"I am that child's legal guardian and you are not, Todd. You can't lock him up in the hospital to keep him away from Walker and me."

"I wouldn't expect you to care about Sam's health and well-being," said Todd. "But someone has to."

"Oh, shut up," Tea growled. "I love that boy, just like I loved Starr. You remember when you were so desperate to make me Starr's mother that you paid me five million dollars? And now you and Blair have brainwashed that sweet girl-"

"Starr?" Todd wondered. He adored his daughter. He had thought she was sweet enough in her younger years, but he had rarely heard anyone but Blair share that opinion. The spiders, snakes, and naked men tied to wheels seemed to put people off.

"You must be so proud," Tea taunted. "She locked me outside in a snowstorm today, just like daddy used to do."

Todd chuckled. "Good for Shorty."

The laugh seemed to enrage Tea even more. "I used to think that you were broken deep inside and with enough love I could help you. But there's not enough love in the world to make you capable of decency, or compassion, or kindness, or affection. All of those children would be better off without you. Sam might have been better off dying out there than-"

Before Todd knew what he was doing, he'd made a fist.

Tea let loose a wail of hysterical laughter.

With effort, Todd unclenched his fist. "You're lucky I don't punch women any more," he said, low and threatening.

"I'm lucky I ended up with Walker and not you."

"You are," Todd agreed. "Look, I treated you bad and I'm sorry. I tried to tell you that when I came back to Llanview."

"I don't believe that."

"Either way, it's true." Todd was suddenly exhausted. He needed to be with Sam. He needed to be with Jack. He needed to put his arms around Blair. What he did not need was another go-around with Delgado. But Delgado was spoiling for a fight. She always was. This time, he didn't hide his sigh.

"Aw, poor Todd," said Tea. "The truth hurt?"

"What do you want, Tea?" he asked quietly. He wondered if he should have asked months before. He might have gotten an answer.

"I want to take my stepson home without any more interference from you."

"I don't mean right this second. I mean, what made you come back to Llanview. It wasn't about Sam. He barely knows you or Walker. Why is it so important for you to stick it to me? Or is it Blair? I thought you liked her before you left."

"Not everything else in the world revolves around you and Blair and your grand romance," Tea scoffed. "Walker doesn't want to be you, and I certainly don't want to be Blair."

Walker chose that moment to arrive. "Thank God." He pointed at the exam room. "Sam in there?"

Todd stepped in front of the door to block Walker's way. "You're not going in there."

The click of Blair's heels echoed down the hall before the scuffle could begin in earnest. "Todd, Jack wants to see you. He's been asking for you."

Walker smirked. "You go see your son, I'll go see mine."

Blair shook her head emphatically. "No, Walker. You and I are going to talk." 


	21. Chapter 21

Todd didn't like the idea of leaving Blair alone with Walker and Tea one little bit. He didn't like the idea of Blair being outnumbered, especially when Tea was in one of her less stable moods. Most of all, he didn't like the idea of missing the inevitable fireworks.

Blair noticed his hesitation. "Go!" She pointed down the hallway in the direction of Jack's room. "I'll handle this," she added firmly.

Todd realized _that_. He just wanted to watch.

But Jack was his son, and Jack needed Todd more than Todd needed free entertainment. He hurried down the hall so quickly that he might have missed the turn had Starr not waved her hand.

"It's really bad," Starr whispered, her eyes wide with fear. "His fever went up six-tenths of a degree since we've been here. It needs to go down. I was trying to make him feel cool by talking about that night we spent in jail—remember how cold it was?"

Todd remembered everything about that night. That had been the night he had finally gotten Jack at least to listen to him, if not accept him.

"I think that's why he asked for you." Starr bit her lip, looking more vulnerable than Starr was ever supposed to look. "I think he's confused, like he doesn't know whether he's here or there…"

"All right." Todd hugged Starr and kissed her cheek. "I'll take care of it."

"Dad, it's meningitis. You can't just—"

"Whatever anyone can do, I'll make sure it gets done. You go conduct reconnaissance for me."

"Jack could be dying, and you want me to spy on people?"

"He's not dying!" Todd snapped. It was inconceivable. He had not fought to come home just to lose his Jack less than two years later. _"You're not dying, Jack!" _he yelled at the bed, hoping Jack was adopt his diagnosis as easily as Sam had. Jack said nothing.

"Starr," Todd repeated. "I need you to go listen in on Walker and Tea and your mother. If it looks like they're going to take Sam out of this hospital, you let me know or you take care of it yourself." He kissed her again, this time on the head. "Locking Tea out of the house in the snow was a nice touch, by the way." Starr didn't laugh. Instead, she looked at him with watery eyes before obediently accepting her new job.

Alone, Todd sat down beside Jack and picked up his hand. "Dad?" Jack asked almost immediately.

It was the most powerful word in the world. "I'm here," Todd said. "I'm right here. Everything's fine."

"You drowned." Jack's head jerked on the pillow. A chill ran down Todd's spine; he couldn't tell whether the movement had been voluntary or whether Jack was starting to have some kind of seizure. He shouted over his shoulder for Kyle Lewis; Kyle appeared an instant later and began to check over Jack.

"Starr said you were talking about that night in the river. But none of us drowned. Remember? We all went to jail together. Remember, we talked about Jack and the beanstalk."

Jack whimpered as Kyle prodded him with something. "Remember?" Todd tried more urgently. "This kid Jack, you see, he dropped a magic bean out his bedroom window, and the next morning he woke up to a beanstalk. His mother, the Lady Blair, told him not to climb it, but Jack…"

* * *

Tea drew herself up to her full height. "You have nothing to say to us that you can't say in court."

"I may have nothing to say to you," Blair told Tea coolly. "But I have some things I'm going to say to my ex-husband."

"That's too bad," said Tea. "Because Walker—"

Blair stood an inch away from Walker. "I left my son on his deathbed and we are going to have this conversation."

Walker rolled his eyes. "Sam is hardly on his deathbed."

" Not Sam!" Blair shouted. "Jack! You know, the one you left alone in your house with a fever of 105!"

"A fever of—" Walker started to laugh it off; Blair saw the moment that he began to take her seriously. It was odd the way Walker could switch between being some version of the man she'd married and a disdainful, twisted mystery with no warning. "You mean he was really sick?"  
_  
"He told you he was sick?" _This was worse than Blair had thought. The last time she'd been this angry, she'd shot her husband in the back._ "He told you he was sick, and you just left him there? I swear to God, Walker, if he dies, so will you."_

"It wasn't Jack, all right?" Walker grabbed Blair by the shoulders and she twisted away. "It was that three-foot-tall Navy Seal. He hates me and he hates Jack, so I thought he was making shit up."

"This is exactly what you did when Gigi Morasco died. You ignored the problem and made sure no one else could help, either."

Dr. Joplin came out of Sam's room. "You need to have this discussion somewhere else," he told them. "You're upsetting the patients."

"Yeah? What are you gonna do?" asked Walker.

"I will call security and—"

"That won't be necessary," Tea injected. "Blair was just leaving."

"No," said Blair. "I'm not."

Tea looked around Blair at Walker. "I'll stay with Sam. Get her out of here. The custody ruling isn't final yet and you don't want to have to explain why you were thrown out of the hospital. Even if Blair gets thrown out too. You have more to lose."

"Come on, Blair," said Walker in his most put-upon, contemptuous way. "We'll finish this in the stairwell. There won't be anyone there."

Blair followed Walker not because he suggested it but because she would just as soon talk to Walker without Tea, anyway. "Do you even care about Jack?" she asked when they were alone. "Do you love him?"

Walker eyed Blair quizzically, and then, to her surprise, sat down on the stairs and gazed off into space. "It's the funniest thing," said Walker after a long moment. "Tea asked me that exact question a while ago."

"What did you say?"

"I asked her whether it mattered."

"What did she say?"

Walker shrugged. "Nothing."

"What about Sam?" Blair pushed. "Do you love him?"

"He's my kid."

"Jack used to be your kid. As far as either one of you knew, he was your kid. And Starr, too. You would have done anything for Starr. That time she was kidnapped in Central Park and you fought those thugs off—"

Walker lifted his eyes, suddenly focusing on Blair. "I heard she's back with that punk Travis."

"It's odd," said Blair, more to herself than to Walker. "It's like you're two people. The man you were then and the man you are now."

"Of course I'm like two people. I was brainwashed into being Todd then."

"It's more than that. It's…"

"It's none of your damn business."

"It's always going to be my business because we share a son."

Walker chuckled. "I might have been brainwashed into being Todd, but you and Tea, you're the ones who really have the mind-meld, soulmate thing going on. That's one of the reasons she was so into fighting for custody. So we could make a clean break."

Blair squatted on the floor so she was eye-to-eye with Walker. "I promise you, there is not going to be a clean break. I will never let go of Sam. Never. You can pretend all you want that I'm not his mother. I have been his mother since the day he was—"

"What? The day he was born? Spencer Truman delivered him in a warehouse or something. Spencer and crazy Margaret. Not you. And you weren't there the day she got pregnant. I definitely remember that."

"Me too," said Blair quietly. "It was a lot like today. A late winter storm. It was so cold, and when Margaret locked me in the trunk of that car I was sure I was going to die. That's when I told you to do whatever you had to do—"

"Shut up."

"Sam wouldn't be here if you hadn't loved Starr, and Jack, and me." She didn't know why she was arguing the point. Walker didn't love them now. They didn't need Walker's love. They didn't even know the man in his present form. They hadn't really known him since the day he'd sat on steps a lot like these, not giving a damn that he'd nearly killed Starr and her unborn baby.

"Because Todd loved you," Walker corrected.

"So let Todd raise Sam."

"Todd took everything else. He's not taking Sam, too."

"What did Todd even take that you want?" Blair asked. "Not Starr. You haven't had any use for her since you caught her in bed with Cole. Not Jack. You left him alone in your house to die. Certainly not me. I repulse you."

"You really do."

Blair didn't care about the insult. Somehow, she knew it was time to go in for the kill. "Give up Sam right now and you never have to see me again. You don't want Sam. You can't even say you love him. He's keeping you here when you could be in Tahiti with Tea and Dani. You don't want Dani to be down there without you much longer, do you?"

"It won't be much longer either way. The trial custody period is almost over."

"I've already been on the phone with Herb Callison," said Blair. It was more or less true. She'd told Langston to talk to him, at least. "He's already drafting the paperwork. You get temporary custody of Sam and he runs off in a blizzard. You bring Jack over for a visit and you leave him all alone when a decorated war veteran and police officer tells you that he's sick. That's enough to tie this up in court for years. You and I don't have to be lawyers to know that's true. Those will be years where Dani grows more and more distant from you and Tea. Years where you're around me, and all those other reminders of your life as Todd that you hate so much. And all for what? A child you never wanted and don't even know."

Walker was blissfully silent.

"I'm going to call my attorney and check on Jack. You have ten minutes to decide whether you want to continue cutting off your nose to spite your face."

* * *

Walker Laurence knew how to walk away from things.

He'd walked away from his life as Walker Flynn when he'd known it was time to join forces with his brother Mitch.

He'd walked away from his whole identity to become Todd Manning.

He'd walked away from Blair and her children when he'd started to feel a creeping, uncomfortable separation of himself and Todd every time he looked at them.

And he could certainly walk away from Sam.

He opened the door to Sam's room and snapped his fingers at Tea. "Let's go."

"I'm not going anywhere!" Sam shouted. In a shadow, there was a dark movement that Walker immediately identified as Starr. She had been placed in charge of tracking Sam's whereabouts, no doubt. Walker would have done that when he'd been Todd.

"Fine, you can stay," Walker told Sam. "Tea!"

"We can't leave Sam here," Tea pointed out.

"Sure we can. Todd and Blair can have him. I'm going to drop the suit and sign the adoption papers for Blair today."

"Walker!"

Walker shook his head. His mind was made up. "You said that what you wanted was a clean break. This is the only way we'll get it. Dani's spent most of the past three months in Tahiti without us."

"You were the one who put her on the plane back there after she found out about Ross."

"Because I wanted her to have some space. Now she's had it. It's time for her to forgive you, and she can't do that if she's there and you're here."

"We did not go through everything we went through to go home with nothing!" Tea objected. "I am not going to watch Todd Manning smirk—"

Walker pushed Tea against the wall. "So this is about Todd?"

"Of course not!"

"It better not be."

"I love you, Walker. You're the one I want."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" Walker looked around surreptitiously, waiting to see if anyone was going to throw them out for being loud again. He appreciated Tea's enthusiasm, however.

"You never really got a chance to think about it. You didn't know I wasn't Todd until right before Allison shot me. Then you thought I was dead, then you were sitting with me in rehab. It didn't give you much chance to think about what you wanted."

"I want you."

"Then come with me. You know, it makes me sick when I look at Blair and her kids. It reminds me of what it felt like to… split. To start to feel Todd falling away and me coming out. It's like being on the worst amusement park ride ever, getting jerked back and forth between seeing them with my eyes and with his."

"I was married to Todd," said Tea quietly. "Why doesn't that happen when you look at me?"

"Because Todd never saw you," said Walker quietly. "I do. But if you'd rather stay here and be some kind of obstacle for Todd and Blair instead of the heroine of your own story…"

She threw her arms around Walker. "Just let me see the papers Herb sends over before you sign them."

* * *

"I'm sorry, Dad," Jack said, interrupting Todd's story.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for." Todd brushed Jack's hair out of his eyes. "Nothing some free baby-sitting and chicken salad sandwich delivery wouldn't cure."

"I'm sorry I was mean to you."

"I get where you were coming from. You've had some bad breaks and some of them were my fault. But now—"

"There is no now. I'm dying."

"You're not dying, Jack," Dr. Lewis interrupted. "You just came down almost two degrees while you were giant hunting."

"Really?" Todd mouthed at Kyle where Jack couldn't see.

"Really," Kyle repeated. "You're on the right track," he told Jack. "A little bit more and we'll officially say your fever is broken."

"But I feel hot," Jack whined.

"Could you have told me that half an hour ago? I don't think you even understood what your sister was saying when she brought you in. But you understand me now."

"Yeah," Jack agreed.

Todd kissed Jack on the cheek like he would have kissed Starr. "See? No dying. Baby-sitting and chicken salad." Jack made a face. "Maybe not right now," Todd amended.

"I kept thinking you died," remembered Jack. "You died when we jumped in the river and I didn't get to tell you I was sorry."

"Nobody died and you don't need to be sorry. You need to get well." Todd readjusted the cooling pad.

"You said you knew all about jumping into the water," Jack said. "You said you would tell me, but you never did."

Todd's heart soared. "Well, there was this one time I was with Dr. Lewis' sister at my stepfather's cabin…"

While he talked, Todd watched Jack's temperature fall until it was almost normal. He and Kyle pulled the cooling blankets away and let Jack drift into a peaceful sleep.

* * *

Blair did not like the idea of being away from Jack, but she had to strike while the iron was hot with Sam. At least this would not be one more time that Jack felt shoved aside for a sibling. Todd was with him. Todd would take care of him.

When Herb arrived to deliver, personally, a withdrawal of petition for custody and the paperwork required to make Blair Sam's adoptive mother, Walker signed it.


	22. Chapter 22

Blair was surprised when Herb asked her to meet him at La Boulaie but explicitly specified that she should not bring Todd along. She'd spent the past year reveling in having a relationship with Todd that was legitimately open and honest. She hadn't expected Herb, the paragon of decency, to be the one to suggest that she start keeping secrets.

"I imagine that you'll want to share this news with Todd," Herb told her right away, addressing her concerns before she voiced them. "But under the circumstances, I had to give you the option to decide when and whether."

"Is this good news or bad news?"

"As far as I know, it's good news." Herb smiled affectionately and handed Blair a stack of papers. "These came over from Tahiti this morning. Everything is in order. Walker has renounced his parental rights to Sam."

"_Renounced_?" Blair tried the word out in her mouth. "He gave me full custody before he left. He doesn't have to give up his rights to Sam to do that."

"It appears that he's chosen to."

Her heart soared. How many times had Todd told her that Sam should have been his son? How many times had Sam made it perfectly clear that he wanted Todd to adopt him? She and Todd would have two sons and two daughters together, and what could be more perfect than that?

She threw her arms around Herb and hugged him hard. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"I'd like to take credit for this, but I can't."

"You have no idea why…"

Herb produced a sealed envelope. "I haven't read this. It's marked confidential to you."

Her name was the only word on the outside of the envelope. She recognized Walker's handwriting. With trepidation, she broke the seal and began to read.

_Dear Blair,_

The last time I wrote you a goodbye letter, Margaret Cochran had just shot me in the leg and assured me that she had someone watching Starr when the bullet wasn't persuasive enough.

You should know that when I woke up in Tahiti last year, I was confused about who and where I was. I thought that Margaret was still holding me captive and when I was able to speak, I asked for you. I didn't even remember Dani. Reality came back within an hour or two. Going back and forth between Todd's thoughts and feelings and my own, to the extent that I even know what those are, is like having perpetual motion sickness while being repeatedly clubbed over the head. You and Starr and Jack and even Sam trigger this. Sam and Jack are not safe around me as a result.

Tea is right about needing a clean break. I need that space to understand who I am. As such, I am requesting that you and your children do not make direct contact with me unless and until I request otherwise. If there is a situation where contact is absolutely imperative, by which I mean life and death, please go through Dani or Tea first.

In order to facilitate this lack of contact, I am renouncing my parental rights to Sam. It is entirely your decision as to whether Todd adopts him. Just please don't hand him over to Marcie McBain and her self-righteous band of followers. I wasn't meant to be Sam's father, but you were meant to be his mother. I was right when I asked you to be his mother even though you and "I" were pretty much over by then. I know I'm doing the best thing for Sam now when I make it official, as I should have done six years ago.

It is entirely your decision as well what you tell Jack and Sam about cutting off contact with me. (I don't include Starr because I don't believe that she gives a shit.) I am telling you the truth when I'd rather not so that you will have the truth as an option when your family moves forward without the memory of me.

Be happy.

Love, or not, how would I know,

Walker

P.S. No one shot me or threatened anyone to get me to write this letter or sign the accompanying documentation.

Her first impulse was to write back to Walker, but that defeated the whole purpose and ignored the only thing he'd asked of her in exchange for Sam.

She settled for sharing the letter with the only other person who had really gone through the whole saga from beginning to end. She met Starr at the L.U. library, not wanting to wait until the end of the day for her daughter to come home.

Starr read the letter silently, smiling only when she got to the remark about whether or not she gave a shit. She stroked the letter with one finger as if in farewell and gave it back to Blair. "It makes a lot of sense," Starr said quietly. "It kind of explains how he changed so much. How at first we could believe he was Dad, and by the end we wondered how we could have ever believed it. Like the veneer of Dadness Mitch Laurence gave him was wearing off."

"I never should have accepted it. Accepted him."

"You only did because I did."

"You were a little girl I was—"

Starr held up her hand. "We've had this conversation ten thousand times before. Walker did this for himself, but I think he also… I think he was also trying to give us a way to not have it ten thousand times more. Even if looking at us makes him sick, I think he really wants us to move on and be happy. I think he meant that."

Blair hugged her daughter. "I think he did, too."

"Do you think we'll see him again?"

"I don't know," said Blair honestly.

"I think we will," Starr decided, and they mused on the letter for a few more minutes before Starr's most impish grin lit her face. "So are you going to let Dad adopt Sam?"

A year before, Blair would have had doubts. She and Todd had had so many tugs-of-war over their children that there had been a certain safety in thinking that Sam could never be caught between them. That was over now. "Of course I am," she said without hesitation.

* * *

Sam's official adoption was scheduled for April 29, 2013. Unsurprisingly, Sam wanted the same trappings Bree had gotten the year before when Brody had adopted her. Blair was happy to oblige. She closed Capricorn for the celebration.

Sam was more about the party and less about any deeper meaning, which was fine with Blair. She knew what it was like to grow up without a family. Sam didn't; his day-to-day life would change not at all from what he had always known. In this, at least, Blair could consider her life a success.

She leaned against Todd in the corner booth and took stock of the family they had built together.

Starr and Travis were dancing; Starr threw back her head and laughed with the exuberance that had always been one of her hallmarks.

Jack and Jamie were sitting at the bar, pretending to be grown, and pretending that they weren't pretending. Jack had recovered steadily from the moment his fever had broken. The only reminders of his illness now were a few extra gray hairs on Blair's head... and she dyed those, so they weren't really reminders, after all.

Hope and her friend Sierra Rose were hidden under a table, preferring a ground-level private tea party to the larger party surrounding them.

Sage was propped up in a highchair and watching her surroundings with wide, intelligent eyes. Beside her, Jamie's little brother Diego banged a spoon on the tray of his own highchair.

And Sam was making a spectacle of himself, with Bree by his side, as usual. Sam and Bree's assorted punishments had been lifted for the day, and they were taking full advantage. Currently they were jumping up and down on a table. Bree, apparently finding this level of chaos insufficient, opted to start juggling ketchup bottles as she jumped.

"We'll clean it up, don't worry," Brody called from across the room as ketchup splattered across the walls and the floor.

"Never mind," Blair called back. "I was thinking of redecorating anyway."

"Really?" Todd asked as she settled back against him.

"Mmm hmm." She took his hand in hers and traced his fingers with her own. "When I bought this place... well, I wasn't thinking very far beyond keeping Cristian's job and keeping my own escape plan. It wasn't a great time and there were days where if I hadn't been able to come here and sing, I don't know what I would have done. Capricorn isn't a bad name. It fits right in with our little celestial theme. Your Sun, and our Starr. But it was a name RJ chose for his daughter."

"So what do you want to call it?"

"If it's not too cheesy..."

"When did cheesy ever stop you? You named our youngest child after a spice."

"The second I saw you at the _Vickerman_ premiere, things that didn't make sense for eight years made sense. You came in and you pulled Jack back from the edge. You gave Starr her fire and her confidence. You gave Sam a father, and he's never had that, not really. You gave me Sage. You forgave me when I didn't really deserve it. You gave me a safe place so that I wouldn't need to buy a club just to separate myself from the mess that my life turned into. You built that beautiful house that I forgot to dream about. You gave me shelter. That's what I'm thinking of renaming it. Shelter."

"I like it," said Todd. "I like you."

"I like you, too." Blair told him.

In that moment, there was nothing in her life that she didn't like.

**The End.**

Author's Note: _There. End. Stupid trilogy that was supposed to be a one-off is only six times longer than I meant it to be. Thank you for reading.  
_  
**Disclaimer**:_ I do not own OLTL, Llanview, or its characters. All belong to Prospect Park and ABC._


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